Inheritance

JENNY PETTRICK

To Peter and Sue Barlow

Note:

The background events mentioned in this novel – the hurricane and its aftermath, the failure of the banana crop, the filariasis campaign, the switch to decimal currency, the opening of the new wharf and the grand concert to raise funds for the Women’s Committee Headquarters – all happened during 1966-67 as described. The characters and plot, however, come from my imagination.

Two annual events mentioned in the novel – Tapololo and White Sunday – usually occur in the same month – October. For narrative reasons, I have taken the liberty of separating them by a few months.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This novel was written in Menton France, where I held the New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize 2009. I thank New Zealand Post and the Winn-Manson Menton Trust for their great generosity.

I wish to thank Guy and Maureen Powles and Taimalieutu Kiwi Tamasese for their generous and patient answers to my many queries. Also Flora Usipua Tamasese-Va‘a, Lynn Barlow, Tim Barlow, Peter Barlow, and Laughton Pattrick.

The following books were among those which assisted my research:

The Making of Modern Samoa by Malama Meleisea
Cyclopaedia of Samoa 1907, reprinted 1984
An Introduction to Samoan Custom by FJH Grattan
Salamasina by Augustin Kramer

and various archaeological research papers by Janet Davidson.

Any errors of fact in the text are entirely my own.

Doubt that the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

Reunited with her aunt after many lost years, Jeanie spoke of her father’s death in Samoa.

Aunt Mary was horrified. ‘It wasn’t like that!’ she cried, tapping Jeanie’s sleeve softly with a twisted old finger. ‘Not at all like that.’

‘But you weren’t there, Aunt Mary,’ said Jeanie, wondering if her old aunt was losing touch with reality.

‘At his death, no. I’m talking about his birth. John’s birth. It wasn’t ugly or horrible. Poor John. He should never have been told that.’

Jeanie thought that her old aunt, her father’s stepsister, might have trouble with the idea of rape; would not, perhaps, admit its possibility. ‘What do you know of father’s birth?’ she asked gently, not wanting to spoil long-held and perhaps tender beliefs with the harsher truth.

Aunt Mary seemed lost in some memory, but then she stirred and sighed. ‘Your Granny Stella, bless her soul, would not tell your father, you see. Our mother was very firm on that. John was a sensitive little boy, prone to tears and silences. Mother thought it best to bend the truth a little.’ She looked sternly at Jeanie. ‘Only a little, my dear, and out of kindness. At any rate, he seemed to have little interest in the details of his birth.’ Aunt Mary smiled, the soft old skin crinkling around her smoky-blue eyes. ‘Not like me. I wanted to know everything, was always asking questions. I heard part of the truth, you see, from a river-man. We went for a picnic on the river steamer; I suppose we would have been eleven or twelve, my brother and I. I always thought of John as my brother. This old fellow told me about John. His story was different from Mother’s version, so of course I had to know.

‘How was it different?’ Jeanie was disturbed; on edge to hear. But the old lady would not be hurried.

‘Your Granny Stella told me then, but said I was not to tell John. He might take ill, she said. I seem to remember John was having trouble at school at that time; often begged to stay home with Mother. You know what he was like.’

‘Yes,’ said Jeanie, ‘but not always.’ She felt disloyal, accepting her aunt’s matter-of-fact assessment of her father’s periods of depression.

‘It’s true that the girl Bridie – his real mother – had lost her mind. Yes, that is true. You say it was on John’s birth certificate?’

Jeanie nodded and Aunt Mary tut-tutted crossly. ‘They don’t need to write down that sort of thing. What on earth is the point? But, Jeanie, there was no mention of – of violence. My mother said that the Chinese man, John’s birth father, was a lovely gentle fellow, who grew vegetables up the river and was lonely. She told me that he looked after the mad girl, Bridie, when others shunned her. The way Mother told it, the story was sad and beautiful, not violent or shameful.’

‘Dad was told the Chinese man hanged himself out of shame.’

Aunt Mary looked up sharply. ‘That’s rubbish. Who told him that?’

‘Gertrude Schroder must have mentioned it, I suppose, and then it … it got out.’

The old lady snorted. ‘That would be Gertrude. A McPhee she was. Mother had no time at all for that family. They were Chinese haters, every one of them, she said. John was their blood relative, she said, but not one of them showed the slightest interest in him. Until that, Gertrude suddenly needed an heir up there in Samoa and came snooping around, inspecting his credentials – his suitability. I knew there’d be trouble.’

Aunt Mary sighed. She poured a little more tea and sipped, holding with two hands so that her shaking would not spill it. ‘No, Mother was very firm that I was not to mention the McPhee family to John. I think, now, that was a mistake. Wouldn’t you say?’

Jeanie frowned. ‘Surely if they hated him …?’

‘But, dear, look what happened. Wouldn’t it have been better if he had been told about his birth in a loving way? By a loving mother?’

Jeanie was silent.

‘He should have been told,’ said Aunt Mary firmly.

Jeanie felt trapped. She wanted to argue. ‘Why didn’t you tell him then? After Granny Stella died?’

The old lady put her cup down. ’It was not my place, Jeanie. It was Mother’s.’

PART ONE

Gertrude’s Family

Elena

Invercargill, New Zealand, 1990

The moment I saw her walk through from the exhibition room towards the gardens I knew it was Jeanie Roper. No shred of doubt. The hair was grey, the face partially obscured by a large knitted scarf, but there she was! My friend resurrected. That unmistakable little frame, occupying so neatly the space around her (so unlike mine!); the same quick way of walking that even a tropical climate had never slowed; the birdlike tilt of her head, looking this way and that as if she might miss something vital. I held my breath to see her stop and examine a possum-fur hat. That delicate, long-fingered touch! I had seen it a hundred times in other places, other times.

She was at the far end of the foyer. It would not be proper, even for a colourful lady like me, to scream or dance in that quiet museum atmosphere, but I couldn’t help raising my voice. ‘Jeanie!’ I called. ‘Jeanie Roper!’

She paused for a moment, then without looking in my direction walked quickly through the tuatara room and out of sight. I suppose it took me less than a minute to walk across the foyer – one doesn’t run in a museum, and my size doesn’t allow me to move quickly these days – but there were only an old man and a child in the room when I reached it.

‘My good friend!’ I called out to the empty air. ‘Jeanie!’

An ancient tuatara gazed at me from behind glass, his swivelling dragon eyes unblinking. The man gathered the child against his raincoat preparing for further mad acts. I smiled, tried to explain, but he shrank back, shaking his head. I don’t think I am usually a frightening woman. Large, certainly, but stately rather than intimidating I would have thought. Perhaps this far south, older folk are not so used to Samoans. More likely he found my distress unsettling. I had given up hope of ever finding my dear Jeanie again, and there she was. Suddenly.

Glass doors gave out onto wintry Victoria Gardens. Pushing through, I stood at the top of the steps, looking right and left. No sign of a distant retreating figure; only the great bare trees. Nearby, straggling rose bushes waited for their winter pruning; sad iris clumps sat in muddy beds. I would have seen her, surely? A light rain fell. The cold air caught in my throat; watered my eyes. If she wished to run away I could not hope to follow her. But did she even see me? Perhaps she didn’t recognise her old friend?

For another few moments I watched the empty park. A brisk young woman with a pushchair and a trotting dog jogged down the path. No one else. Who else would be mad enough to walk in this weather?

Back inside I sat for a while, close to tears. A kindly attendant touched my shoulder and asked if she could bring me anything. Was my distress so obvious? Jeanie, Jeanie. But surely someone here would know her. As my breathing slowed I began to think. Invercargill is not a big town. On my free day before returning to Wellington I would smoke her out! After all, what possible reason could she have for hiding from me? I tried to persuade myself, you see, that she had simply not recognised me.

She had come from the exhibition room so that was where I started. A display of well-executed watercolours, some of them startlingly original, lined the walls of the small area set aside for local artists. Most of the paintings seemed to be of European inspiration – Spain, perhaps or Italy. Then I recognised a landmark and had to chuckle. I knew that place! The old mill near the camping ground in Florence. Many years ago … but that’s another story. To be honest, for a while I forgot the task at hand, and lost myself in old memories.

A smiling attendant brought me back to the present. I asked her if she had noticed the woman in the dark woollen poncho.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the third time she’s been in. We haven’t had big crowds to this one.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘Sorry, no. Not one of our regulars. Should I know her?’

‘No, no. Someone I thought I knew.’ I tried to make light of my anxiety.

We chatted for a while about the paintings. She wanted to know if I thought they were good. Perhaps, in my splendid full-length leather coat and flamboyant hat, I looked like an authority. But I did like the work. I asked whether the artist was Italian.

Clearly the attendant was ready with gossip. She lowered her voice, leaned forward in a rather conspiratorial manner. ‘Well, she may well be. Evidently she went to Italy in search of a father. Her New Zealand mother was at some Italian festival in Florence, drank too much red wine, enjoyed the company of some handsome young bloods. Afterwards had a very hazy memory of the whole event. Then, too late to do anything about it, discovered she was pregnant. It seems’, the attendant shook her head dismissively, ‘that Francesca has always been brought up to respect her Italian heritage. But after a year of searching and painting she came back with nothing. Except of course paintings. I would have …’

But I had stopped listening. This was altogether too weird. I peered at the name signed with Italianate flair on the painting of the fine old mill standing amid flowering cherry trees beside the river.

‘Francesca Hope,’ said the attendant, directing me towards a small photograph and brief biography.   

Francesca Hope, of New Zealand and Italian ancestry, grew up on Stewart Island, was educated in Invercargill, and is at present in her third year studying fabric design at Otago Polytechnic. Though the works in this exhibition portray the muted colours and soft light of the Italian townscape and countryside, Francesca intends her future work will incorporate influences from the Pacific. Most of these works are for sale by arrangement with the artist.

I studied the photograph. The attendant, startled by my bark of laughter, came hurrying across.

‘Something wrong?’

I shook my head, still chuckling. Wonderful, wonderful! ‘I want to buy the old mill,’ I said and kissed her on both cheeks, which astonished her even further.

At the information desk I was given Francesca’s address in Dunedin. I was told that I needed to settle with her, as the museum was not able to sell direct.

All the pieces fitted. Jeanie Roper, Florence, the daughter who thought she was Italian. The girl in the photograph – very beautiful, a little serious, perhaps – had dark hair and dark eyes. They could have come from anywhere – the Mediterranean, South America. Ditto the light brown skin. But those broad cheekbones and deep jaw were pure South Pacific. Any expert on Pacific peoples could see it. I could narrow it down to Samoa, and probably highborn.

No one else knew that particular story about Florence. I would like to have believed that the clues had been laid out especially for me to follow, but I was here at the museum by purest chance. Jeanie could not have suspected I would visit. How strange, though. Jeanie need never have hidden from me. I would have kept her secret safe.

We had such fun back then! I still laugh out loud, remembering the show we put on to raise funds for the National Council of Women’s Centre. And how we trapped Tiresa into getting her leg strapped. Jeanie must remember those times too. Surely she laughs still?

I made an excuse at my office: an interesting case in Dunedin, I would be back a day late. Then I rang Francesca. Her words were quick and light – I thought of birds, and smiled. Jeanie had spoken in the same way.

‘You won’t want to come within a mile of my student squat,’ she laughed, ‘and the art school’s chaos too.’ Of course I was curious to see her in both those environments, but this was only a start. We arranged to meet in a small café close to the Polytechnic.

She was already sitting at a window seat when I arrived. Clearly she was expecting someone different. She continued staring out of the window while I stood in the cosy fug, taking my time over removing coat and scarf. She sat very straight-backed, a little tense, perhaps; thinner and paler than her photograph. An enormous purple jersey hung off shoulders which seemed to have no more substance than a coat hanger. But she would be tall when she stood. Unlike her tiny mother. The dark hair needed a wash; it hung limp and long, half obscuring her face. The nose unsettled me. It was decidedly aquiline. I had expected somehow to recognise her. Could I be wrong after all?

‘Francesca Hope?’ I said.

She jumped to her feet, pushing her hair back from her face. A quick nervous gesture. The wide smile and broad face were reassuringly Samoan. ‘Sorry. Sorry I was dreaming. Are you Elena Levamanaia?’

We drank tea and ate carrot cake. I think she was worried about the sale of her work. A large Samoan lady is not your normal art collector; perhaps she saw it that way. We talked about her painting and what she was working on now – fabric design. She was keen to put Pacific images and colours onto fabric using the latest screen printing techniques.

‘Pacific as in the Pacific Islands?’ I asked.

Francesca smiled. ‘Not really. I don’t know much about that. I need to explore my own feelings. But we are a Pacific nation here aren’t we? I’m talking about sea and sky, clear sharp colours, green landscape.’

And on she went. All a bit derivative, in an earnest, studenty way. I wanted to go deeper; get to know her; not listen to her lecturers’ enthusiasms.

I steered her onto Italy. ‘I’ve been to the place you painted,’ I said. ‘Florence. What took you there?’

She looked at me quickly. An anxious, defensive smile. ‘Oh it was all a bit hopeless I suppose. I wanted to find my father, but without a name, and only a vague description, the whole idea was doomed.’

‘Your mother didn’t know your father’s name?’

Francesca told me the story then: the delegation her mother was part of; the party in an apartment in an old mansion, close to the camping ground; singing around a bonfire in the back yard; the police putting a stop to the carousing; waking up in an empty, but clearly slept in bed with a sick headache. Every detail as I had described to Jeanie one day in Samoa. The only difference was that in my story pregnancy was an unrealised fear.

Francesca told me she’d found a mansion that fitted the description, but the residents were all respectable university tutors. One offered to help, but Francesca suspected his motives and searched alone.

‘It was stupid. Hopeless,’ she said. ‘So I gave up and enjoyed the art.’

‘Your mother went with you?’

She laughed. ‘My mother hasn’t stepped foot outside Southland since I was born. She loves it down here. But she paid for me to go. Said she owed it to me to get to know my father’s country.’

Truly, it beggared belief. How could Jeanie send her daughter on a wild goose chase to experience a culture that was nothing to do with her real parentage? And Jeanie, a stay-at-home? My vibrant, curious friend? This was even more fascinating than I had suspected.

‘What does your mother do?’ I asked.

‘She’s a teacher. I grew up on Stewart Island and we still have a crib there, but now she’s senior mistress in Gore.’

Francesca glanced surreptitiously at her watch. I was boring her with my questions.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘sorry but I’ve got a tutorial. Could we …’

The money. I reassured her by getting out my cheque book and writing out the modest amount. ‘I love the painting. I may be interested in your fabric when you have something for sale.’

She liked that. Clearly money was a problem. ‘We’re not meant to sell our work while we’re students, but we all do if we can get away with it.’

I gave her my card. She read it carefully. ‘You’re a doctor? A medical doctor?’

I liked this serious girl, but she needed loosening up. Fattening up. To be blunt, she damn well needed to embrace her Samoan heritage.

‘More a medical adviser these days,’ I said. ‘I work with the Samoan community here and in the islands.’

‘Here in Dunedin?

‘No, no. In Wellington.’

But her mind was already elsewhere. I gave her a hug – couldn’t help it: Jeanie’s daughter and a child of Samoa! If she was surprised she hid it well. I felt she was responding to something in me. A kinship. She promised to keep in touch about the fabric.

Off she ran. A quick smile and a wave back through the window. What joy I felt to see her! Surely only good could come of this.

But why, why, why had Jeanie not confided in me? Stuart Roper might be the answer. Did that despicable husband of hers still have some hold over her? Hamish Lander might know.

‘Hamish,’ I said, ‘you old legal beagle, how are you?’ I could hear him clearing his throat at the other end of the line, while he tried to place the voice. He will not admit his hearing is failing.

‘It’s Elena. Elena Levamanaia. Listen, I’ve just seen Jeanie Roper down here in Invercargill.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t pretend with me, Hamish. You heard.’

He mumbled and tutted, trying to make small talk, attempting to divert the conversation towards the controversy about my latest paper, but I wasn’t having any of that.

‘You remember very well. Jeanie Roper. You and Simone were very good to her before she disappeared. I think she’s going by a different name and living in the South Island somewhere. And listen to this Hamish – I believe she has a daughter of Samoan descent.’

Suddenly the old man was clear and forceful. ‘Elena,’ he said, ‘you are too prone to meddle. If Jeanie Roper has changed her name it will be for good reason. And, if you please, do not even hint at any of your wild guesses in Simone’s presence. You know how she is.’

Hamish is so dry and cautious. ‘We are talking about my good friend, Hamish. And Simone’s. What’s more, if I am right, Jeanie is bringing up her daughter to believe she’s Italian! That’s not right, you must see that.’

Hamish started speaking, then, in Samoan, using words that were quite hurtful – even discourteous to one of my ancestry. Usually we get on well in a sparring kind of way. He knew something; that was obvious. He’s a pedantic old fellow – very knowledgeable about Samoa, but not given to emotion. All those years ago, he had professed to know nothing about Jeanie’s disappearance. I had suspected his weasely legal words even then. Now I began to doubt seriously. The gist of what he was saying – in no uncertain terms – was that I must (must!) let sleeping dogs lie. That I must curb my famous curiosity (actually the Samoan word he used would translate better as mischievous, which I resented. The girl might be related to me; I had a right to know – and so did she).

In the end I rang off without a further word, which was discourteous of me. But the way he lectured me in my own tongue was completely uncalled for. I thought he and Simone would be delighted to hear about Jeanie, after the interest they had both taken in her back in the islands.

Hamish

Wellington, New Zealand, 1990

Elena’s phone call rattled me. It was the shock; I am too old to deal with sudden emergencies. Hearing news of Jeanie Roper after all these years. In the event I spoke too harshly, reacted too strongly. My stupid behaviour will have spurred Elena on, when the correct strategy would have been to remain calm; to bring her gently towards doubt of her own conclusions. An old barrister’s trick.

So I must think carefully and calmly what line to take. Elena is formidable at the best of times; at the worst, a dangerous adversary. She will try to hunt out the truth, now she has been given a clue. Her emotions rule the considerable portion of good sense she possesses; she will want to clasp both Jeanie and the daughter to her warm and voluminous bosom. It could all end in disaster, and I myself might become implicated. It has always been imperative that neither the Samoan community nor the appalling husband learned the truth.

Damn Elena. She is a fine and clever lady and a credit to her family. I enjoy her company on the odd occasions when we meet. But such a steamroller! How on earth might she be diverted?

For some time I sat looking out at the cold grey of the winter harbour. I shivered; a premonition, or simply the room cooling? To the south a curtain of rain moved up between the headlands. Simone, down the back pruning roses, would soon come stamping in, her gumboots muddy, hair bedraggled. I fall asleep over my crossword while she still manages steps and steep places like a young woman. Simone’s mind has not lost its edge; she would notice my agitation. I felt thoroughly cornered. My hands were shaking as I pulled out the old journals and began to read.

Gertrude’s plantation; the disputed will. That’s where it all began. One of my last Samoan cases before I retired and we left the islands, Simone and I.

There is something comforting about dry legal cases. The words are so precise; the judgments so well reasoned and clear. I had soon forgotten the present problem, and was remembering the smells, the heat, the view from our verandah that day back in the sixties, when John O’Dowd arrived in Samoa with his daughter Jeanie and that dreadful husband of hers.

Hamish

Apia, Western Samoa, 1966

From the verandah I watched the banana boat anchor off the reef and knew Gertrude Schroder’s mysterious ‘family’ would be on their way here soon. A fascinating prospect. Simone, down in the garden, straightened up and shaded her eyes against the blinding sea. My wife would not wear a hat, had never worn one, even to church, which was an outrage to the Samoan congregation. But that was Simone. She would shrug her shoulders – very Gallic, even after thirty-five years in the islands – and say ‘My hair is my hat. God will understand.’ She had a point there.

Simone was just as curious as I was about the New Zealanders, but for different reasons. She pitied them and feared for their safety. Gertrude Schroder was arrogant and cruel when crossed. To my knowledge no one had survived more than an hour in her presence without invoking her disapproval in one way or another. Simone was already preparing to mother-hen the newcomers. All week she had been muttering. She predicted a dire outcome.

Up she strode from the garden, her loosely tied lavalava displaying slim brown legs and arms, talking to herself as she came. ‘The poor souls, they will have no idea. That dragon will eat them!’ Inside, she gathered a welcoming basket of fruit and nuts – bananas, pineapple, pawpaw, coconut and our own precious cashew nuts.

Perhaps I felt pity too; certainly curiosity. What would they be like – the father and daughter who carried her blood? Would they be cast in the same iron-clad mould as their relative? But to be honest, I was more absorbed in the prospect of the legal battle. Only Gertrude Schroder would take on one of the most powerful families in Samoa over a land ownership matter. Already I had begun to document the case.

At least she sent a car for them. A jeep, actually, battered and dusty. She could have sent the Mercedes. She could have come herself to welcome them, for heaven’s sake, but there was a weather warning out and she wouldn’t leave the plantation.

The old dragon had decreed that they were to stay meantime in her town house, next door to us. A big airy bungalow, same vintage as ours, built in the German era. They knew, back then, how to build for this climate: high off the ground, so that air could circulate underneath; deep, shaded verandahs that kept the sun from the generous rooms; bare wooden floors. Gertrude preferred to spend most of her time in a stuffy and ostentatious concrete bunker on the plantation where she could keep an eye on her ‘lazy and dishonest’ workers.

I watched the first lighters already bringing passengers ashore. Dozens more nosed into the ship, like piglets suckling a great sow, waiting for the crane to load them. All day the strings of battered, flat-bottom boats would bring goods in to the wharf. My new typewriter, I fervently hoped, would be aboard this time. You could never be sure. Tomorrow the lighters would reverse their journey, taking barge loads of bananas, copra and cacao beans out. Meantime, Gertrude’s family would be taking their first steps on the island.

Simone and I watched together as the three newcomers climbed out of the jeep and walked up to the steps of the house next door. Our verandah overlooked their drive and verandah. You couldn’t help but see. I suppose in other climates people would call it nosey, but in Samoa most people live more or less out in the open. You get used to being watched. The father walked in front. That would be the John O’Dowd Gertrude had mentioned; the problematic nephew. A man in his fifties I guessed (and was right), slight, an old-fashioned grey felt hat square on his head, neat dark suit and gabardine overcoat. He must have been sweltering. His step, though a little hesitant, was oddly proud. He walked straight to the steps in front of the other two, as if taking possession on their behalf. Perhaps that’s what he felt. He climbed the steps, straight-backed, quick on his feet; went in without looking back.

‘See him step so firmly,’ said Simone, who fancies she can judge a person by their carriage. ‘A nice man. Honourable.’ She laid her freckled, sun-burned hand on mine and moaned. ‘But Hamish,’ she said, ‘look at him! Far too gentle. Whatever can we do? This will not go well.’

Simone is apt to over-dramatise. I’m well aware of her reputation in the community. How could she summarise John’s character after one glance? But who could deny her accuracy this time?

The other two paused before they entered the house. The thick-set man would be the son-in-law. He stood there as if waiting for someone to pay attention, then called to his wife, who perhaps didn’t hear. She (Jeanie we learned later) could have been a young girl – so delicately boned and tiny. She stood in the driveway looking around her with a natural ease. She was simply dressed in a loose, creamy shift, her long dark hair tied back neatly, a bright bag swinging easily from her shoulder as she turned to examine the big trees in the garden, stretching up to smell a frangipani flower. She noticed us on our verandah and raised a hand slightly then lowered it again, looking back quickly at her husband.

‘Oh the darling!’ cried Simone. ‘I will love her. We will get on like the house on fire. Come let us take the welcome basket now.’

‘Give them a moment, for pity’s sake Simone. They are just off the boat. Let them clean up.’

Simone smiled at my caution, but agreed to wait. ‘She’s afraid of that other man, did you notice? Is he her husband do you think?’

I had noticed. The other man, Stuart Roper we discovered later, looked thoroughly out of sorts, his face red and sweating. He dragged his bulky body up the steps as if he were climbing an insurmountable barrier, then turned to shout abusively at the driver. Not a good start. Samoans are not a servile people. Samasoni, who occasionally drove for Gertrude and who helped manage one of her plantations, was a respected family man and a candidate for his family’s matai title. I didn’t hear what Stuart said, but clearly it gave offence. Samasoni simply unloaded the cases, left them in the drive and drove off down to the wharf.

It was the father, not Stuart Roper, who brought them in.

For a while we watched the bustling activity down at the wharf. I pointed out this and that, hoping to keep Simone’s traditionally effervescent welcome at bay for a decent interval.

The pace of life in Apia always cranked up a gear when the banana boat arrived. Women from the outlying villages arrived with their handcrafts for sale to the few tourists. The usually empty pavement outside the two big stores – Retzlaffs and Nelsons – was quickly lined with women sitting cross-legged behind their wares: woven fans, mats and hats, carved bowls made from coconut shells, beautiful shell necklaces, tapa cloth squares, a few mangos. We saw several locals already heading rather optimistically for the stores. In the week before the boat arrived, the shop shelves slowly emptied and the store itself became a sad, silent tomb of out-of-date, unwanted goods. On the day after the banana boat, even Simone, who believes in self-sufficiency to a ridiculous extent – always experimenting with dried banana, pickled pawpaw, preserved beans, for heavens sake – even Simone would be found in the crowded stores.

I couldn’t keep her interest in the distant scene for long. Next door needed her attention. And of course I was curious myself. How much did the family know? Gertrude, who had never shown any sign of possessing family, had suddenly unearthed these three relatives. In all possibility they had no inkling of the disputes and incriminations which would follow their arrival. Nor, I imagine, had anyone briefed them on their relative’s fearsome reputation.

I reminded Simone to cover herself decently. She smiled as if I were the idiot, patted my cheek, and threw a brightly patterned mumu over her head. It is just as well that our property is surrounded by a high hedge of orchid and hibiscus. She can be difficult at times, Simone, but she looked splendid that day, marching across the lawn in her flowing gown and magnificent pile of pure white hair, the brilliant basket of fruit held aloft like a trophy, goodwill in every movement of her tall, bony body. She has always lighted up my dry legal life. I have been so lucky.

Gertrude Schroder had always fascinated me. She was already an institution in Samoa when I arrived in 1928, during the Mau. A fierce, rather reclusive woman, wife of a plantation owner. Gertrude McPhee was her maiden name; I looked it up in the records at the High Commission. An upright woman, very pale-skinned, she always wore her straw-blonde hair pulled back in a bun. She looked Teutonic; later I learned she came from New Zealand. In the early days she was rather admired, I believe, for her energy and ability to organise. She had married old PJ Schroder back in the German times and turned his ailing plantation around. They say she arrived unmarried but with a goodly sum of money to invest. She never talked about her New Zealand past, and so naturally people made one up for her: she was escaping a bad marriage; she had absconded with funds which didn’t belong to her; she had inherited a gambling fortune. When anyone asked, in a polite, disinterested way – at a cocktail party or some other social function – she would set her mouth in a thin line and walk away.

Soon after her arrival, before the First World War, she set her sights on Petrus, son of a German planter and a Samoan woman, and married him. Who knows what PJ saw in her? He was a huge man – large, bristling moustache and bushy eyebrows, German in his way of life, but inheriting, I suppose, the charm and easy confidence of his high-born Samoan mother. You would expect PJ to choose a more pliant woman, with more laughter and light in her than Gertrude. Perhaps he guessed that his plantation needed someone like her. He would have been right on that count. I liked old PJ. He gave me good advice when I first arrived; sat under the fan in my new office, overflowing the little chair, knees spread wide to accommodate his belly, dark eyes watching me shrewdly.

‘You are too young for this task, my friend,’ he said, his words thickly accented. ‘They should have sent one more senior.’ He laughed and added, patting his stomach. ‘And a more big man. You will need to talk loud, loud!’

His advice was always accurate. Even to a novice’s eyes, the administration, in those early days of New Zealand rule, was failing. The Beach– the European and ‘afakasi community who lived mostly in Apia, many of them with businesses on Beach Road – was up in arms over prohibition; Samoan leaders were in revolt over arbitrary removal of titles. The villages were refusing to pay taxes as a non-violent protest. I thoroughly supported their movement – the Mau. ‘Afakasi planters were either openly belligerent or deliberately obtuse. Naturally enough. They resented the fact that their German friends’ plantations had been seized by the occupying forces in 1914. Spoils of war. PJ was safe enough. He was ‘afakasi – half European – which exempted his land from seizure. Also, his wife Gertrude was a New Zealander. Doubly safe. But the big plantations owned by the DH & PG were German-run outfits, whose managers were German with German families. All were seized.

‘My friend,’ Schroder would rumble, wiping beer froth from his impressive moustache (we all brewed our own beer during the prohibition), ‘of course we prefer the Germans. Their blood is here!’ He would thump his massive chest. ‘My cousin was deported and his land taken because he had the misfortune to marry a good German wife. And also,’ he leaned forward to pat my hand sadly, ‘it must be said that the German bosses were more fair. Sorry my friend but your colonels are not wise men. No. Their eyes look in all directions except in front of their noses.’ Here he laughed and imitated – very well – a puffed-up military man with head in the air. ‘These New Zealand bosses do not recognise our pule. They do not know who we are.’

He had come in that day to ask me to intercede with the administration on behalf of his cousin, an outspoken matai and a leader in the Mau movement.

‘It can not be done, what you people try to do,’ he said, pounding my desk until it threatened to break. ‘My cousin is appointed matai by all his family. A New Zealand colonel can not take away that title! This is madness and will end in much unpleasant.’

An accurate prediction. Several outspoken matai had been ‘stripped’ of their titles by the administration and the title then given to a man who sided with the administration’s harsh rules. Some matai had been deported. OF Nelson himself, a wealthy and influential trader who was a leader in the Mau, had been deported. It was indeed madness.

Along with many leaders in Samoa, Schroder had felt affronted that the League of Nations had set a tiny country like New Zealand in charge of administering Samoa.

‘An insult, you see! Fiji has Great Britain. Why not us too? We are the most ancient people and should be treated with more respect! The Tama a ‘aiga naturally feel their pule is not respected.’

Schroder would make his pronouncements with a good-natured grin, but many of the high-born chiefs felt keenly the bumbling insults laid on them by our ignorant administration.

My job, as a young lawyer, was to help with problems over what were now called the Reparation Estates: former German plantations which had been liquidated and re-commissioned in the Crown’s name. Not a happy time. The New Zealand military leaders were appallingly ignorant. PJ was right there. And arrogant. Reading reports of those years, during and following the war, I felt ashamed of my country. By the time I arrived, the tricky transition of the estates was over to a large extent, and the last of the German nationals deported. I continued with the paperwork on behalf of New Zealand, which sounds safe and simple, but was far from that. It needed all my guile and perseverance to untangle the intricacies of ownership. The big plantations had been easy, but some of the small ones had been in German hands for three generations and were deeply enmeshed in Samoan village life – or, I suspected, deliberately made to seem so. I soon developed a very healthy respect for the Samoan ability to argue a case from black to white, particularly where land was concerned. I would smile, and go along with the argument if I could get away with it. I like to imagine that a few questionable plantations remained in German hands as a result.

So PJ’s genial and ongoing advice was valuable – particularly during the Mau. He often came in to Apia on business and would stay for a drink – prohibition was an open joke, but the Beach still resented the arbitrary imposition and mourned the loss of their good German wines.

I didn’t meet PJ’s wife until later. They lived east of Apia in the Tuamasaga district and Gertrude did not come into town often, though she was talked about with a certain awe, even then. Theirs was a smallish plantation of one hundred acres, a little bit of coconut for copra and the rest in cacao, with grazing for a small herd of cattle under the coconuts. Gertrude was notorious for her fanatical promotion of cacao as the crop of the future for Samoa. Certainly, the Samoan cacao bean was greatly prized for its dark flavour, useful in the blending of cocoa. I heard the stories from other planters who would laugh and shake their heads. Too much hard work, they said; coffee is easier, if the world market for copra dies. But Gertrude persisted with her cacao and the plantation prospered.

I had always thought of Gertrude as childless, but Simone put me right on that. In the early days, when PJ was alive, he and Gertrude often came down to the big house next door to us. Gertrude would put on rather elaborate morning tea parties for palagi women. Simone was invited, but only the once, as I remember. She came striding back from that one occasion, disturbed and angry.

‘Can you believe it?’ she cried. ‘Gertrude and PJ had three children! Three!’ Simone was pregnant with our first at that time, and apprehensive about giving birth in the islands. She had been dreadfully smitten by morning sickness and had a healthy respect for anyone who had managed to give birth at all.

‘That so-small lady had three most beautiful children,’ she told me. ‘Two boys and a girl. I saw their picture on the wall, wreathed in fresh flowers. So naturally I exclaimed and asked questions. Naturally.’

Simone sounded indignant. I feared she had overstepped the social codes in some way. But I was also surprised. PJ had never mentioned children.

I remember Simone patting her bulging stomach. She was always thin, and the babies jutted from her frame like neat, solid footballs. Being Simone, she never made any attempt to hide the bulge.

‘All I asked was some questions about the births, and did she have them in hospital – we were all ladies together, Hamish, no need to be squeamish. But all of a sudden, silence in the room. Every person looking in some other direction. Gertrude glaring at me like I was some monster. She would speak no word to me after that.’

It turned out her three children had all died in the dreadful 1918 flu epidemic. Another woman whispered the information when Gertrude’s attention was elsewhere. Gertrude would never speak of them, and would not tolerate anyone else mentioning them.

‘But how was I to know?’ wailed Simone. ‘The photograph was displayed for all to see. Now who will invite me to morning tea?’

She was young and vulnerable then, far more emotional than most of the Apia ladies – I imagine she seemed strange to them.

‘All three dead in the space of a week,’ she cried, clutching her belly. ‘How could she bear it? Oh Hamish, have we come to a dangerous place for our babies?’

Later, Simone found out the whole story. Several of PJ’s relatives, and many plantation workers, had died as well as the babies. Gertrude had been so furious – and no doubt heartbroken, though it was hard to imagine her in that state – that she stormed down to the military headquarters and tore up her New Zealand passport in front of the authorities. She blamed their lax regulations for failing to quarantine a shipload of sick visitors. Perhaps anger and outrage were Gertrude’s only tools for releasing her feelings.

All her anger, all her accusations were entirely justified in my view. How on earth could the military have got it all so wrong? The flu epidemic was ten years past when I arrived but still it rankled with the Samoans. The death-bringing ship had indeed been quarantined off Fiji and was not allowed into American Samoa. Why on earth was it allowed to anchor at Apia? Sheer bureaucratic inefficiency. Taluna offloaded sick passengers at Apia and the result was devastating. One quarter of the population died. These people had little resistance to flu or colds as it was, and the 1918 flu pandemic was no ordinary flu bug. When the worst of the epidemic was over, a deputation of the remaining chiefs and orators took a boat over to American Samoa and asked that America take over from New Zealand as administrator. What an insult! That finally persuaded the New Zealand Government to remove Colonel Logan, though it was hard to say that his successors were much better.

I broached the matter, delicately, with PJ the next time he visited me. He shook his head sadly.

‘Ioe, a sad time. My brother, he offer us a nephew to bring up, but my wife think that is a …’ he waved a large hand, trying to grab at the right word ‘… too unnatural custom. Uncivilised. So we grow old with no child.’ It was the only time I saw his big face other than cheerful.

Gertrude never offered advice or help to Simone over our babies. Never showed any interest in them. In Simone’s opinion the loss of her three children had etched a deep scar into Gertrude’s heart, a knotted lump that had never been released by a healthy bout of grief. I often thought that if those little ones had survived, perhaps motherhood and grandmotherhood might have softened her, but even into old age she remained flinty. I was keen to watch the effect these newcomers might have on her stony old heart.

John O’Dowd and his daughter were already unpacking when we arrived. Jeanie straightened up, a pile of books in her hands, and cried out at the sight of the welcome basket. ‘Oh how beautiful! Is that all for us?’

I was struck by her size. O’Dowd was not a big man, certainly, but his daughter was tiny. Not much over five feet tall I guessed. But full of life. You would not imagine that she had just stepped off that rusting old banana boat. Simone handed her the basket with a flourish. Jeanie set down the books, took the proffered basket and laid it, pride of place, in the centre of the table.

‘Grown all by us, from our garden,’ said Simone, flinging her arm in the direction of our place. ‘Welcome my darling, you must come and visit often!’ She embraced Jeanie, kissing her robustly on each cheek. The poor girl was obviously taken aback by the onslaught, but received the embrace in good heart. Her father, I noticed, buried his head quickly in a case of books. I went over to him and offered a more modest handshake.

‘I’m Hamish Lander, welcome.’

‘John O’Dowd,’ he said. A quiet man, rather reserved, but his smile was warm. ‘This is my daughter Jeanie Roper.’ It was said with pride and love. There was no mistaking the bond.

He surprised me, I suppose. Not his age – I had expected that. Gertrude’s nephew, after all, would have to be middle-aged. But I had forgotten Gertrude’s earlier mention of what she called ‘Chow blood’. John O’Dowd was very clearly of Chinese extraction. Not fully Chinese – his skin was too pale – but the narrow, black eyes and thick straight hair were undoubtedly oriental. I wondered if Gertrude Schroder knew how obvious his ethnicity was. When PJ died, Gertrude had laid off all her indentured Chinese labour, claiming they were incompetent. A palpably unjust accusation, and uncharacteristic. Gertrude simply didn’t like ‘Chows’, as she insisted on calling them.

John was a slim, neat man, not very tall, his hair trimmed close to his head. Though they had just arrived off the boat, he was clean-shaven. His shirt sleeves, now that he had taken off his jacket and waistcoat, were held away from his wrists by expanding braces – I was intrigued to see so old-fashioned a custom.

‘You are the nephew?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘Of Gertrude Schroder?’

He smiled. ‘So I believe. I have never known any blood relatives before a few months ago. Her …’ he hesitated, smiling again at some private joke, ‘… visit of inspection arrived at rather a good time for our little family. My son-in-law has recently lost his position in his legal firm, and the post office which I managed has recently been closed.’

‘Gertrude will employ you then?’

‘So she says. I believe she quizzed the divisional head about my credentials and work history. A very thorough lady.’ He looked at me carefully. ‘Do you doubt her intentions?’

This man did not look the sort to run a plantation. Something bookish and methodical about him. His manner was diffident. I noticed the books he was unpacking were to do with railways. A railway buff would have no joy in Samoa. Perhaps the son-in-law would be the one to manage the estate.

‘My son-in-law, Stuart, is upstairs resting,’ John said. No sign of disapproval or resentment in his voice or expression, but I felt it all the same. ‘Already he finds the climate trying.’

‘We all do,’ cried Simone, ‘when we arrive. Have no fear my darlings, in two weeks exactly your blood will have thinned, and you will feel at home. I guarantee!’ She stroked Jeanie’s arm gently. ‘You must learn to enjoy the siesta. Every day!’

If only Simone would take her own advice. Most days she was out in the garden at high noon, the skin on her bare legs and arms dark and desiccated like withered leaves. Even during the early afternoon downpours she would stride around singing and shouting for me to come out and join the ‘natural shower-bath’. No wonder the neighbours thought her mad.

I had just managed to steer her towards the door when Stewart Roper emerged from a back room. I was expecting the bad-tempered man we had spied on earlier, but this was someone transformed. He must have showered while the others worked: his fair hair lay flat to his head and drips still ran behind his ears. He wore a crisp white shirt and shorts, knee socks and sandals, and strode forward with hand outstretched.

‘Stuart Roper. Pleased to meet you.’ His grin was wide and infectious. A large man. He could have been a rugby forward – that sort of solid, muscled frame and short neck.

I introduced myself. He was quick to find out my past position in the administration, my present status, whether I spoke Samoan. He ignored Simone and the others; spoke only to me. When Simone started a conversation with Jeanie, he turned slightly towards his wife, a half-smiling shake of his head, and she fell silent. A genial man, but, it would seem, a bully to his wife. I had been enjoying our conversation up to that point.

Simone, ominously, walked to the door with a quick wave of her hand. Usually I have to drag her away. At the door she turned and spoke loudly. ‘Jeanie my dear, come over tomorrow and I will introduce you to some ladies. We will have tea in the garden.’

The invitation sounded, to my experienced ears, more like a declaration of war.

I had learned of Gertrude’s new relatives about two months before they arrived. For some reason the old dragon trusted me, and would ask my advice – free of charge naturally – from time to time.

She called unannounced early one morning, her big Mercedes pulling up into our drive, which was unusual, given that her own house was next door. Simone and I were sitting in the garden taking our morning coffee. Our housegirl’s family had built us a little fale beside our cashew trees: coconut-palm thatch supported by a few poles. A simple construction which protected us from sun and the odd shower, but let in every breeze. A favourite spot. We loved to sit there in the mornings.

‘Oh dear,’ said Simone, ‘Look who’s coming.’

Gertrude waited for Samasoni to open the door of the car and help her out. As she limped her way across the lawn towards us, the car drove off. Simone and I exchanged a smile. Gertrude didn’t want her visit noted by the notoriously gossipy Beach community. The old lady planted her stick firmly and looked at Simone. They were old adversaries – a match for each other and both wary of the next move. They faced each other – so different in looks but both fiery. Gertrude was rather short, immaculate as usual, in pale, belted linen, leaning on a stick, but somehow managing to look upright and immobile. My Simone, at sixty-two, at least fifteen years her junior, tall and angular, her mass of white hair as wild and tangled as Gertrude’s was fiercely tamed. Simone’s brilliantly flowered mumu swung loose from her shoulders. Gertrude would have said – probably did – that Simone had gone troppo.

‘I wanted a word with you Hamish,’ said Gertrude. The peremptory words were addressed to Simone.

Simone rose. ‘Good morning Gertrude. Would you like coffee?’ She was not going to accept orders from the old lizard.

‘In private, if you please.’

‘Gertrude, my dear,’ said Simone, her tone oiled with false civility, ‘Hamish and I have no secrets as you surely will know. However, if you wish to conduct your conversation in so rude a manner’ — she rolled her ‘r’ in a fearsomely French manner — ‘I have no interest at all in staying to listen. Or to bring you coffee.’ As she stalked away through the trees she called back to me, ‘Hamish, give a call if you need me. I will be in the back garden.’ A warning that she would run speedily to my defence if Gertrude showed signs of attack. Last year the old lady had used her stick to strike a stonewalling government official.

I wished Simone had stayed. Gertrude is so demanding and I am not always strong enough to put her off. Sometimes she asks for legal opinions which require a substantial amount of research.

Gertrude sat in Simone’s chair and got straight down to business. ‘Hamish,’ she said, ‘I do not want you to breathe a word of what I am going to say to a single soul. Not even your wife. Especially not your wife. Please promise.’

I sighed. She need not be so blunt. As a lawyer I was of course discreet. Gertrude loved a chance to have a dig at Simone; I imagine she saw my wife as letting the palagi side down. ‘Gertrude,’ I said, ‘I will make up my own mind what I share with Simone. You mustn’t bully me.’

Gertrude changed tack. A creaky smile appeared fleetingly among her wrinkles. ‘Your wife is a dear, but you would have to agree that she is not the most discreet …’

Oh how she maddened me, that woman! But of course I was interested, so I compromised. With some reluctance I promised to keep the information to myself if I judged it potentially damaging in a legal sense. After all, she was not offering to pay me for my advice! To be honest, others had asked me for the same pledge more than once before. Simone is not the only gossip in Apia, but perhaps one of the most inventive. Rumours spread like wildfire among the palagi population.

Gertrude nodded. She produced from her bag a cacao pod, split it open and plonked it on the table. She picked out a glistening seed and popped it in her mouth, nodding to me to follow suit. When she had sucked off the juicy coat she spat the bean into Simone’s coffee cup and took another. Gertrude’s favourite snack. She habitually carried a pod or two with her – as if to show how industrious she was, cleaning her own beans while others wastefully ate cake or biscuits. The coating on the beans is tasty if you can be bothered. I left her to her sucking and spitting.

Next she produced a couple of documents. Slapped them on the table.

‘I have discovered a nephew.’

I felt pleased for the old lady. She lived such an isolated life. Busy, surrounded by house staff and employees, certainly, but lacking friends.

She continued, eyeing me sharply, ‘I wish to leave the plantation to him and his family.’

I couldn’t suppress a bark of laughter. This was so typical of Gertrude!

She spat another bean then tapped my hand painfully with the coffee mug. ‘Hamish, this is no laughing matter. I have spent much time and effort …’ Her voice wavered for a moment. She looked away; I wondered if she might be close to tears. ‘… much time and effort to secure a decent future for the plantation.’

Words that others might use over their children’s security. Her child was the plantation.

It turned out that she had flown to New Zealand twice in the past year, searching for a willing heir. There were other relatives, I gathered, ones she considered more suitable, but none who was prepared to come. Evidently Gertrude had always known about this John O’Dowd, but the wretched woman had never before considered getting in touch with him. Not in over fifty years!

‘Well?’ Gertrude never wasted time on pleasantries. She probably guessed what I would say and was ready to engage in the argument.

‘Was it not your husband’s wish that after your death the plantation should go to Tiresa’s family?’ We both knew this to be the case.

Gertrude nodded. ‘It was. Yes. But that was years ago. Things have changed. And I own the plantation now.’

‘He left no written instruction?’

She looked me in the eye. ‘No.’ The statement was too brisk. I didn’t quite believe her.

‘Tiresa and her family would contest, I imagine. The expectation has been there. Many of your husband’s relatives work on the plantation.’

Gertrude bared her yellow old teeth. ‘Surely I have the law on my side? Let them contest.’

She would likely win, I imagined, though Tiresa’s ‘aiga was powerful and perhaps able to exert pressure.

It was useless to talk morality with Gertrude, but I had to attempt it. ‘Why on earth would you leave the estate to strangers who know nothing about Samoa or – surely – running a plantation, when your own Samoan relatives are right here and waiting?’

‘Waiting for my death? Yes. Yes they are. That Tiresa!’ Gertrude suddenly sat bolt upright, bristling like an angry old cat. ‘She would put the plantation back into traditional village hands. All she cares about now is fa‘asamoa. She has forgotten her palagi side. What about the good German blood in her veins? She’s angling for a high title for her son. Hamish, you know what will happen! There will be a big sa‘ofa‘i and generous Tiresa will return the plantation to village ownership. Speeches, fine mats presented, kava drunk, land returned and next day … Suddenly her son will become an important matai!’ Gertrude glared at me as if I were to blame. ‘And the plantation will fall into neglect.’

I was astonished to see her old blue eyes fill with tears. The future of her plantation was so important!

‘I can not bear to lose it!’ she shouted. ‘I will not! You know what fa‘asamoa is like, Hamish. If the plantation goes to the Levamanaias it will fail within a year. They will pick the crop only when they need a little extra cash. They will let the trees become overgrown. They will forget to fill the orders from overseas. You know it as well as I do!’ She spat out another bean and dabbed angrily at her eyes. ‘Oh it is such a mess!’

I sighed. She might be right. But surely … did the old lady imagine she would be watching with rage from beyond the grave?

I changed tack. ‘But the nephew? Would he come? Would he be interested?

Now her attitude changed from fierce to tentative. ‘I believe so. Yes, I believe he would. His circumstances are … unfortunate at present. But Hamish …’

It turned out she hadn’t confirmed the invitation. Not until she settled the delicate matter of his birth. She tapped the document on the table.

‘My nephew’s birth certificate. He has not seen it. And need not I hope. We don’t want the whole of Apia chewing over this bit of gossip, Hamish. I understand his knowledge of his birth circumstances is hazy. You might say sanitised. I do not believe he knows the wretched circumstances at all.’

‘Then how do you …?’

‘Oh,’ she said impatiently, as if it were unimportant, ‘I have always known. You don’t need to know all the details. John is illegitimate. Born to my demented sister as the result of rape. I want to know whether his illegitimacy would damage my case if it came in court.’

She eyed me rather madly; tapped the birth certificate. ‘My sister, while still a young girl, almost drowned. Lost her mind in a boating accident. She used to wander the banks of the river in a filthy state. A poor silly laughing stock. Some despicable Chow raped her out in the bush somewhere and then when she fell pregnant and his crime became obvious, the coward hanged himself. That is John O’Dowd’s true birth heritage, and now I must stoop to accept this tainted half-Chow as nephew. Oh I could spit!’

She did spit. Then looked at me quickly. I think she realised that she had said too much. Her half smile appeared again. ‘Well we need not repeat that garbage. He was adopted by a decent white couple and brought up properly. John has a reputation as a competent and diligent worker. I checked all the details thoroughly. And his son-in-law seems handy enough. They will have to do. So what do you think?’

I was so shocked by her fury – the vitriolic way she denounced her own nephew, her rampant racism – that I found it difficult to speak.

‘Hamish?’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t take any notice of an old lady. I know my views are no longer fashionable. Just tell me. Could illegitimacy – or Chow blood – be an argument against me?’

Weakly, I answered her question. Reassured her. Illegitimacy should not affect the case if the Levamanaias contested. I should have roundly denounced her; run her off the property. I learned later to respect John. He became my friend, but I let him down, I believe, that morning.

The only small victory I might claim in the sorry business of that inheritance was to persuade Gertrude, some weeks later, when she came in to lodge her new will, to omit the daughter and son-in-law’s names from the document. Gertrude obviously favoured the ‘untainted’ blood of the son-in-law. I persuaded her that a simple will, favouring her own nephew, might be more persuasive if it came to court. She agreed and crossed out the names. I and my secretary witnessed the change.

As it turned out later, this was most fortuitous.

A month after her new relatives arrived, Gertrude, perhaps satisfied that they might be up to the task of running a plantation, invited us all to a welcoming party. John and the Ropers were in Apia overseeing the loading of their cacao crop. You would have thought Gertrude might hold the party in her town house, but no. The wretched woman chose to summon us all to the plantation. The road inland was appalling. But she was making a point of course: this is my land and will stay that way.

She rang to ask whether we might drive the guests of honour up. ‘We are all occupied preparing the feast, Hamish. Would you be so kind?’ Gertrude was a past master at laying on charm when it was needed. I agreed with some misgiving. Our new Datsun was a tough little nut, but carrying five people over those ruts would challenge even a truck. My wife was pleased of course: a chance to get to know Jeanie.

That day, towards the horizon a deep purple line stained sea and sky. An unusual, ominous sign. For the past several days that odd colouring had come and gone. A hurricane, perhaps, heading in a different direction. Bad weather had been predicted – not a hurricane – but then forecasting was a hit and miss affair. Weather stations were too sparse, and information patchy at best. I had seen a dark stain like that only once before. The result had been devastation.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Simone. ‘Should we close the screens?’

She laughed at my caution. ‘It’s miles away. Who knows what direction it will take? They never hit us anyway. Look, our friends are waiting.’

Simone and I exchanged smiles at the sight of them standing together in the drive. The men were in white tropical suits and white straw hats; very proper and correct, but Jeanie had dressed Samoan style in a flowered puletasi. Where on earth had she found it so quickly? The full-length lavalava and tightly fitting tunic top suited her small body beautifully. Simone was draped as always in a loose mumu, this one peacock blue and sea green, if I remember correctly, a spray of spider orchids tangled in the white web of her hair. She clapped her hands as if applauding a performance.

‘Perfect! Perfect my dear!’ The words were for Jeanie. ‘But the finishing touch …’ She picked a red hibiscus flower from the hedge and tucked it behind Jeanie’s ear. ‘There! You are now ready for your first fiafia.’

A mischievous act. Gertrude had clung strictly to her European status. She never wore Samoan dress, always insisted on sitting on a chair, even in a traditional fale; ate at a table with a knife and fork. I have never, ever, seen Gertrude with a flower behind her ear. In the three years since independence many of the ‘afakasi women with ‘European’ status were relaxing into Samoan custom – fa‘asamoa. Not Gertrude Schroder. That old dragon would disapprove of Jeanie’s dress and Simone’s subversive hibiscus flower.

The Schroder plantation was east of Apia and inland. We turned off the round-the-island road onto a rutted dirt track lined with tall kapok trees. Red volcanic dust rose in clouds behind us, and because we travelled so slowly, and the morning breeze always blows inland, we were soon enveloped in our own cloud. I missed the turn off and had to reverse for several yards, a task I abhor. John O’Dowd offered to step out and guide me, but I feared for his crisp whites and did my best. The Schroder road is more a boulder-strewn river bed than a track. I clamped my teeth to hold back the curses as we ground and lurched our way first between an avenue of old, giant-leaved teak trees, and then through neat rows of cacao shrubs planted by Schroder’s father and now managed by Gertrude and her gang of workers. The plantation was well managed. If only she would pay the same attention to her road. At a particularly loud bang of rock on exhaust pipe, John leaned forward and spoke in my ear.

‘I’m afraid our extra weight is damaging your car.’

‘Never mind,’ I said grimly. To be honest it was not easy to force out a civil word.

‘You are very kind. No doubt Mrs Schroder — my aunt – will soon arrange a car for us.’

An optimistic statement. I had no reply. All my attention was focused on getting the car up the bloody road in one piece.

‘Here we are my darlings!’ cried Simone. ‘Now we can all enjoy ourselves.’ She knew how out of sorts I felt.

We parked on the grass beside several other cars belonging to Europeans from the Beach. I recognised the magistrate’s black Chevrolet, and a New Zealand High Commission vehicle. Also Elena Levamanaia’s new, bright red Mini Moke and her brother’s sports car. That was interesting. But of course Gertrude would invite the opposition when she unveiled her new-found relatives. Had their mother, Tiresa, also come I wondered? Unlikely, given the tensions.

A large black sow followed by a group of squealing piglets ran between the cars. Obviously saved from becoming part of the feast because of her young progeny. Off to one side smoke and steam rose from the umu. Other pigs and chickens would not have been so fortunate.

Gertrude herself was above us, waving her cane this way and that, supervising preparations from the shade of the verandah.

‘Hamish!’ she called. ‘Bring them up here! The feast will be down under the house later.’

I let the guests of honour mount the steps first, curious to see how she would greet them. Had they become friends? John went first, smiling up at her, his steps brisk, hand already held out towards her. She leaned on her cane, waiting, smiling too, her smart green linen dress immaculate, a wide-brimmed white straw hat set perfectly straight, snowy hair pulled back tightly into a bun. Gertrude would not even understand the meaning of the word dishevelled.

‘John,’ she said loudly, (there would be people inside listening), ‘my dear nephew, come in come in.’ She gave him her hand and he shook it warmly. If Gertrude felt distaste at the Chinese ancestry she showed no sign. She turned to Jeanie and Stuart. For a moment she looked Jeanie up and down and then, still smiling, reached out and in one smooth movement plucked the flower from behind Jeanie’s ear and deposited it in a floral arrangement. Again her words were formal, spoken for the curious guests. ‘Welcome my dear relatives. Come in and meet everyone.’

Simone’s loud snort over the flower went unheard, thank goodness. Our entrance was ignored. I held tightly onto my wife’s arm and steered her into the room.

Inside, the air was close and heavily scented with frangipani blossoms. I longed to remove my jacket but Gertrude would not approve. Her windows were protected with glass louvered windows and insect screens. What breeze there was, here inland, could not circulate. Not that Gertrude would notice. Her blood, in Simone’s opinion, ran naturally icy. But that day her old cheeks were flushed. Holding John O’Dowd firmly by the arm, she clacked her cane on the floor tiles to gain our attention.

‘Welcome, willkommen, talofa lava!’ she cried.

‘Good heavens,’ muttered Giles Metford from the High Commission, ‘She’s positively hectic. Hope she doesn’t have a heart attack.’

Giles, overweight, and given to drinking too much, had been at the High Commission for longer than was usual for a career man. They said his career had stalled when he showed too much interest, at some function, in a high-born young woman. Not done in Samoa. Giles compensated for his less than stellar career by trying to become the prime purveyor of gossip. His privileged position at the Commission made that a dangerous habit. We all suspected he would be ‘moved on’, but year after year he stayed, becoming seedier and more rotund. A sad, if entertaining fool.

Another rap on the floor from Gertrude. ‘Let me introduce my dear nephew, John O’Dowd from New Zealand, his daughter, Jeanie Roper, and his son-in-law, Stuart Roper. I have formally recognised them as my heirs.’

There was such triumph in her voice. I glanced across at the celebrated Elena Levamanaia, who caught my eye and grinned back. The brother looked less amused.

It seemed Gertrude could not wait to share her family news. Her housegirl and houseboy had scarcely begun to distribute glasses of Pimm’s and plates of sandwiches, but Gertrude held thirsty guests to attention with the odd rap of her cane as she spoke. ‘John is the sole son of my sister. Only recently I learned that she married a Chinese merchant and bore him a son. Alas, both were tragically drowned soon after the baby’s birth. John was cared for by nuns and then adopted. Now that I have become aware of his existence, I intend to make up for my neglect.’

Giles muttered into my ear. ‘A somewhat rosy version of events.’ A statement I would certainly follow up later. I had thought the truth about John’s birth would not be out so soon.

Gertrude turned her brittle smile on John O’Dowd, who looked down, embarrassed, perhaps, by all this attention. ‘And now that I have found him and his lovely family, I would like you all to treat him as a Schroder. As if, my dear friends, he were my son!’ A final triumphant rap of her cane.

In the silence that greeted this announcement, Teo Levamanaia, the cheeky boy, set up an ironic slow clap. It was a shocking act of rudeness and very un-Samoan. He stood there, handsome, in white shirt and dark lavalava, but showing ill will in every movement, his eyes challenging, his mouth down-turned. His sister quickly covered with a few words, ironic too, but more subtle. ‘Congratulations, Great Aunt Gertrude, a relative at last.’ She crossed the room and engulfed John in a bear-like embrace. Elena was a good head and shoulders taller, and built like a tank. Even Simone was in awe of her. John bore the embrace stoically, not knowing where to put his arms or his face, not quite sure if the welcome was sincere, but smiling his goodwill. Everyone watched this ritual with interest. Next, Elena advanced on Jeanie who stood close to us, watching. I’m sure none of the new relatives had the least idea of the issues their arrival stirred up. ‘Beautiful puletasi,’ murmured Elena. ‘Well done.’ Then in a louder voice, ‘Welcome cousin.’ She clapped her hands, let out a blood-curdling whoop and danced a few steps around the nonplussed O’Dowds, her outstretched hands as delicate as butterflies. Teo tossed back his head and laughed – more of a grim shout – but he joined in, all slapping chest and weaving knees, whooping and singing. He could never hold a mood for more than a few minutes. I was pleased to see he still remembered a few Samoan ways, even if he was using them to undermine Gertrude’s European-style welcome. Simone started clapping in time to the rhythm. Another minute and she would have been dancing too. Giles, chuckling like a maniac, egged her on.

Gertrude, frowning ominously, took John’s arm firmly and led him out of the room, Stuart following like an eager dog. But Jeanie stayed. It was all immensely entertaining.

The feast brought a certain Schroder order back into the afternoon. Gertrude’s plantation workers had laid a double row of mats on the cool concrete pad under her house. The tall pillars supporting the house were wreathed in coconut fronds and frangipani blossoms. At right angles to the mats was a table, set with a lacy white tablecloth, crystal glasses and wreaths of flowers. This was for the guests of honour and other palagi. Even high-born Samoans and the priest were seated on the floor. Under fa‘asamoa they should have ranked above Simone and me. But this was Gertrude. All those of European status were seated on chairs; those who followed Samoan custom sat below us. Highly embarrassing, not that the old lizard cared.

The feast itself could not be faulted by any standards. Each of us was presented with a huge portion of food – chunks of delicious pork and chicken from the umu, a large round of taro, and rather tough beef from the plantation. On our table, and all down the row of mats, were bowls of chop suey and palusami, whole fish, trifle, cake and pineapple. We ate on large plates marked with the Schroder coat of arms; those on the floor ate with their fingers from banana leaf plates. But apart from the snub to the high-born (Elena and Teo and their mother, who had arrived late) and to the priest, Gertrude’s feast was generous and pleasant. A record player entertained with Beethoven and Chopin, the air under the house was cool, the housegirl kept the chickens and pigs at bay, and there were plenty of attendants to fan away the flies.

‘So what’s the truth about these relatives?’ I asked Giles, who was seated next to me. ‘Are they truly hers?’ I wanted to tease out what version he knew.

‘Oh yes, truly her sister’s. But definitely not her first choice. She’s been badgering the High Commission for years to help her find relatives. There was a brother who refused point-blank to have anything to do with her. Would not even acknowledge her letters. Then she approached three younger half-siblings, one a male McPhee who replied to her letter. That fellow, I forget his name, wrote to us at the High Commission saying that Gertrude had cheated him and his sisters out of their father’s inheritance fifty years ago and would I please inform her that if he heard from her again he would start criminal proceedings.’

‘Fascinating,’ I said.

‘Indeed. That was a couple of years ago. Finally she unearthed this O’Dowd. I would say out of desperation, given her views on the Chinese. She must have known about him all along – she traced him, not us.’

‘He seems a nice enough sort.’

‘Yes, but not legitimate, as she implied today. I’ve seen the birth certificate. Her sister was unmarried and “of unsound mind”. The father dead before John was born. It was a Sister of Compassion who signed the certificate and the papers of adoption.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Not the sort of heir Gertrude would have in mind.’

Giles chuckled. ‘Hence the embroidered truth. By the way, keep all that to yourself. I gather O’Dowd thinks Gertrude’s version is the real McCoy.’

Depressing. If Giles knew, the ‘secret’ would be all over Apia in a week.

The tablecloth flapped against my hand. The wind was rising. Outside, the huge leaves of the breadfruit trees rose and fell as if to fan their green footballs of fruit.

‘Is bad weather predicted?’ I asked Giles.

‘Nothing serious. There’s the possibility of a hurricane well to the north. Won’t come this way.’

Nevertheless, I felt uneasy. The air smelt different. Simone looked over at me. She recognised it too. She had left her chair some time ago and was sitting comfortably cross-legged with Vaifou, her headmistress friend. Somehow Jeanie had migrated with her. I don’t remember seeing John and Stuart leave. Perhaps they were showing guests around the plantation.

Gertrude felt the change in the air too. Her age showed when she creaked to her feet and slowly straightened her back, but her voice still carried authority.

‘Bad weather comes,’ she said. She walked to the record player and lifted the needle. ‘Listen!’

We all heard it then. The cicadas had fallen silent. You get so used to their shrieking you blot it out. Now the silence seemed deafening.

‘Bad,’ said Gertrude. ‘Very bad. I think we had better finish here.’ She was a difficult old lady but she cared deeply about the plantation and ran it well. Her cacao trees came first, second and third with her. We were left to leave or stay as we wished while she called back a couple of the plantation workers, who were carrying baskets of food to the guests’ cars. In a quick stream of immaculate Samoan, she delivered orders to cover the drying cacao beans, tie down the screens in the indoor drying shed, stack the fragrant sacks of dry beans safely under the house. Her workers clearly respected her wishes (or feared the consequences of disobedience). The feast was forgotten in a flurry of running feet and heaving activity.

‘Good God,’ said Giles. ‘What a storm in a teacup! Has she lost her marbles do you think?’

Simone, tugging at my arm to come to the car answered him. ‘She’s right, Giles, for once; she feels it. She was here for the last hurricane. Probably the one before that. She’ll know the signs. Get home before the road is blocked.’

John came hurrying towards us. He looked happy, animated, his dark eyes bright. ‘Can you take Jeanie and me back with you? My aunt thinks it better. She believes the plantation may be isolated for a while and she would like me to keep an eye on things in town. Stuart will stay to give her a hand here.’

‘Perfect, perfect,’ cried Simone. I hoped the other two would mistake her pleasure at Stuart’s absence for simple hospitality. ‘Jeanie, you will sit in the back with me.’

The best part of a sucking pig, quantities of taro and two whole chickens were already stacked in the boot. Our housegirl and John’s would be taking a feast back to their village tonight – as long as we made it home. The wind was steadily rising. Already the track was strewn with palm fronds and small branches. I could hardly see for the whirling snowstorm of kapok.

John laid a gentle hand on my arm. ‘Would you like me to drive?’ I took no offence from his offer. He could see I was sweating, would have noticed the white knuckles. I hate driving even in good conditions – which to be fair, is absolutely never in Samoa. I stopped the car and changed seats with him, pleading poor eyesight. John drove very slowly, with great care and concentration. I don’t think he hit a single boulder.

As we turned into the round-the-island road, a huge flame of the forest tree behind us simply keeled over with a crash, the tips of its crimson branches just brushing the car. Gertrude was right. The plantation would be cut off. We eyed the road-side trees apprehensively as we headed for Apia. In the villages everyone was running. Women were securing the matting screens which were only rarely lowered between the poles of the fale. Kerosene lamps glowed between gaps in the matting. The air was unusually dark.

‘Maybe it’s just a bad storm,’ I said.

‘It’s a hurricane,’ cried Simone. ‘Hurry John, I have my banana chips out drying!’

Banana chips would be the least of our worries if a hurricane struck us.

By the time we reached Apia, waves were breaking over Beach Road. Crooked spears of lightning performed an ominous fireworks display out to sea and rolls of thunder boomed thick and fast. Matua, the banana boat, had already left, probably only half loaded, but much safer to ride out the storm at sea than to risk being dashed onto the coral reef.

One tree was down on Leifiifi Road, but John managed to skirt its thrashing branches and deliver us home safely. The air in our big garden was full of flying debris and three of our banana trees were already down. I had to drag Simone inside; she was desperate to rescue every last cashew nut and pineapple.

Then as we finished securing the screens we jumped to hear the most enormous crash.

‘It’s that tree!’ screamed Simone. ‘How many times have I said it was too close? Hamish run! They may be dying!’

I could scarcely open the door against the force of the wind. Simone was right. One of Gertrude’s huge mango trees next door had come down, crushing a corner of the roof and destroying one side of her verandah. We saw John and Jeanie run outside, look for a moment at the still-tossing branches then head straight across the lawn to us. Jeanie’s hair streamed out behind her in the wind. She was so small, I feared she might be whirled away.

We welcomed them in and secured the door. Our house would be relatively safe as the trees were well away from the house.

I don’t think anyone slept that night. The rain sheeted down, howling wind clattering against the shutters. Twice a shutter came loose, flapping horribly, letting the rain drive in. John and I struggled with rope to tie it back. Every now and then we heard a crash and felt the shudder as another great tree somewhere outside keeled over. Lightning and thunder cracked around us. Simone’s white hair stood almost on end. Could the air be so full of electricity? The house had weathered many storms, but this was a bad one and you always feared that this time the full force might hit us and lift the roof off.

Jeanie surprised me in the middle of the night by remarking that she thought a hurricane would be worse than this! I asked her whatever she meant and she said she’d known storms come up from the south in New Zealand just as bad; that the trees bent and howled but stayed upright. Why, she wondered, were so many around us collapsing? She seemed so calm and interested, as if this were something to be taken lightly! Had I forgotten so much about New Zealand? Are storms there so extreme, I wondered, and feared our inevitable return. Perhaps New Zealand trees are used to the wind – are deep and firmly rooted. The great tropical trees in the islands have grown too quickly, spread widely, without, perhaps, having the need to take a strong footing in the earth. Whatever the reason, we realised that we would soon be isolated. Electricity had faltered and gone soon after the storm struck. Trees would be blocking the roads for days. And what of the crops? The bananas and coffee? What of the breadfruit and mango trees and the taro plantations under the great trees?

I was imagining a starving population.

That hurricane gave us the opportunity to talk with John O’Dowd and his daughter. And to grow to like them. The storm – it was a full blown hurricane, immensely destructive – blew over in twenty-four hours, but the rain continued and trees blocked our road in both directions; power and telephone wires were down. Nothing to do but sit tight in the middle of the house, deal with all the spoiling food in the fridge and freezer, not to mention the food from the feast. Simone fancied she could salt the pork, as our ancestors did, and even tried laying strips of beef on wire racks by the window, trying to make biltong. A putrid failure, thank goodness, but the salted meat lasted well. Far too well in my opinion! When our housegirl finally fought her way through the debris, some days later, we sent her home laden with food.

We enjoyed our own little feast that first night, sitting together in the dark room, lit by kerosene lamps and candles, a stiff whisky for the men and a sherry for the ladies, trying to ignore the explosions and disasters outside. A memorable evening. The signs were there, I suppose, but I didn’t see them then. The daughter sat close to her father, her bright eyes watching him as if anxious about his well-being. He did most of the talking and she encouraged this, prompting him with quick questions, smiling at his answers. In some ways tiny Jeanie seemed the older; he her eager child. His pleasure, at finding a relative, at being ‘singled out’ as he put it, was obvious. Of course I was curious to know his own version of his background.

‘He was adopted, you see,’ said Jeanie. Again that quick careful smile towards her father. ‘And then lost his adoptive father when he was seven years old. His mother never knew the birth parents.’

‘No she didn’t, that’s right.’ John’s face, lit by the flickering lamplight, turned towards his daughter as he spoke. As if seeking her permission to speak. ‘My father – my adoptive father – knew. Once, before he went to the war, he took me to my parents’ grave. I remember a quiet place above the river. He told me they both died in the river. But then he and my uncle Pita – my mother’s brother – both died in the war. We moved away to another town – my mother, sister and me. I never found that grave again.’ He looked again at his daughter – for approval it seemed. ‘In truth, I suppose I never tried. Chinese heritage was not something to be proud of back then.’

Jeanie stroked his shirtsleeve gently. ‘My father has had too many deaths in his life. His mother, Granny Stella, died some years ago, and his own wife, my mother, soon after I was born.’

‘Oh you poor darlings!’ cried Simone, stretching her arms wide. ‘Such tragedy! Here you must eat!’ She passed around a bowl of her dreadful dried banana chips. In Simone’s view, food is the panacea for all troubles.

‘No no no.’ John shook his head vigorously. Simone drew back in some consternation, but his words were directed to Jeanie. ‘We won’t dwell on past trials. Here I’ve found an aunt who wishes to make me her heir. I have something to pass on to you, Jeanie. Not only the plantation – and a house, but a family history.’ He turned towards me, his eyes shining. ‘What a gift,’ he said, ‘suddenly to be handed a family inheritance. A past. I so look forward to speaking with Gertrude about our family, about her sister, my birth mother. And what a joy it must be for my aunt, at this late time in her life, to find people of her blood to care for her and carry on her line.’

He spoke formally – that was his way – but his cheeks were flushed, his light voice a little hectic. I recognised a certain weakness in him – a fragility of the spirit if you will. I saw it sometimes in young soldiers returning from the war. His daughter knew, I think, and feared for him.

In the morning, while the women chatted away over some food-rescue plan in the kitchen, John questioned me about Gertrude and the plantation. He was no fool; had caught an undercurrent up at the feast.

‘Is there some doubt over her ownership?’ he asked. ‘She assured us that the plantation was hers to pass on.’

‘And do you want to take such an enterprise on?’ I asked, avoiding for the moment his question, which was absolutely to the point.

He smiled. ‘I’m perhaps a little old to learn new tricks. But I have always wanted to farm. I will do my share. Hard work is no problem for me. And Stuart is very keen. He’s not been – happy – since he lost his job. Stuart needs to be active.’

‘What about Jeanie? It seems such a big step to come out here; to make a permanent move. Most of the palagi are here for a few years at most.’

John looked towards the kitchen where the women were laughing out loud at something. ‘Jeanie loves new experiences. Not like her stay-at-home father. She will make a good life here. Or anywhere.’ He shifted his chair a little closer, lowering his voice. ‘Your wife is very kind. Maybe she will introduce Jeanie …? I would like to see her out of the house a bit. She and Stuart …’

I waited for more, but he simply shrugged his narrow shoulders. He was quieter that morning, more withdrawn. Perhaps the humidity and the drumming rain undermined his spirit. For the third time he took out his sodden handkerchief and mopped his face.

‘You didn’t answer,’ he said quietly, ‘my question about the ownership of the plantation.’

Indeed. ‘It’s a good question,’ I replied, ‘and you need to know. But it will take some time to answer.’

In those days while we were still cut off by the aftermath of the hurricane, I showed John the notes I had already made about the possibility of a contested will. He had to know. I told him there was a good chance the High Court would find in Gertrude’s favour, but secretly I was not sure. The judge might well want to set a precedent.

‘Do you remember the two young Samoans who danced a welcome to you?’ I asked.

‘Teo and Elena?’ Jeanie smiled at some memory. ‘They were fun.’

Simone cleared her throat loudly. ‘Too clever for their own good, those two. Teo is in trouble already. Back on the island only one month and he runs a child down with his fancy new car.’

Actually I felt rather sorry for Teo. The local paper had roasted the boy who had been more than contrite. Accidents on the road were common, but Teo had been singled out because of his high breeding and educational achievements.

‘But Elena?’ Jeanie persisted. I had watched Elena charming Jeanie at the feast. Elena would have some plan afoot, you could count on that.

‘Too clever, too smart,’ said Simone, emphatically. I think already she felt some jealousy. Jeanie was her prized newcomer; Simone wanted to be the one to befriend her – introduce her to the palagi community.

I brought them back to the point. ‘Their mother is the one who will contest Gertrude’s right to pass on the plantation.’

‘Oh!’ John looked worried. ‘Will there be un-pleasantness?’

I laughed. ‘Good God no. Land disputes are meat and drink to Samoans. Everyone will follow the arguments with great relish. You will become celebrities. It could be years before the matter is settled, and in the meantime Gertrude will continue to run the plantation.’

John worried at a scab on his hand. Jeanie stilled the movement gently. Her dark eyes watched him for a moment, then she turned back to me.

‘Gertrude wrote nothing of this. In her letter there was no question about her right.’

‘In her mind there is no question. The plantation is freehold land. Her husband left it to her in his will. End of story.’

‘Good.’ John stood. He walked across the room to where Simone was now opening the screens to let the watery sunlight in. He began to help her; his movements quick and neat. I felt that he didn’t want to hear more – that he wanted to push away any hint of bad news.

Jeanie spoke quietly, keeping half an eye on her father, ‘So what is the other side of it?’

I tried to make it simple. How can you expect newcomers to the islands to grasp the intricacies of Samoan titles and land tenure? Jeanie had a sharp mind, though, understanding much more quickly than her father, I think, whose attention often seemed to drift as he continued to stand, watching the scene outside.

I told them that Gertrude’s husband, PJ Schroder, had two sisters, Maria and Theresa. Both married Samoan men of high rank. Theresa married particularly well, into one of the four ali‘i families whose titles are usually hereditary and highly respected. Her husband, like many of the older men, died in the flu epidemic, but not before she bore him a son, Samuele, who himself became a respected matai.

‘Matai?’ said Jeanie.

‘We would call it chief, a leader. A matai has control over a portion of village land and is the head of the extended family who live on the produce of that land. He (or occasionally she) dictates who in the ‘aiga – the extended family – works in what part of the family plantations, which fale they sleep in, how much they must contribute at feast times and so on. Under our new independence, the matai votes on behalf of his family.’

Jeanie looked at me frowning. ‘That’s hardly democratic.’

‘Well in a way it is. The whole family chooses the matai. Every member has a say. It’s a bit like the American form of democracy where voters choose delegates to vote on their behalf.’

I was about to elaborate on this, but Jeanie clearly had no interest in American voting systems. She cocked an eyebrow and smiled. Not quite making fun of my obsession, but making her point all the same. What an agreeable woman she was! ‘Gertrude’s plantation?’ she prompted.

‘Samuele, Gertrude and PJ Schroder’s nephew, didn’t hold the highest family title, but he ranked well. His title is attached to the village which is adjacent to the Schroder plantation.’

I explained that the matai title is not strictly hereditary. Theoretically, anyone in the family can be chosen. Samuele died while still relatively young, and there was much discussion over who should be take the title. His two children, Elena and Teo, were considered too young, and also their education was still continuing in New Zealand. In the end, the title was offered to old PJ Schroder, who up to that time, had kept to his ‘European’ status.

‘Oh dear,’ said Jeanie. ‘European? Wasn’t he born here?’

‘PJ was ‘afakasi – half caste. His ‘afakasi sisters chose to marry matai and identify as Samoan. PJ chose – as was his right – to retain European status. This entitles him to certain small privileges, buying alcohol for example, and to vote for the non-matai seats in the Fono. But you see, in the last two years of his life he accepted the matai title.’

John had come back to the table and was listening again. ‘But he died and passed the plantation on to my aunt.’ The last two words were spoken with a kind of nervous emphasis.

‘True, he did. But Tiresa, Samuele’s widow, and her ‘aiga claim that by taking the matai title, he was in effect abrogating his European status. They claim that his deathbed wish was that when Gertrude died, the plantation should go to Tiresa and her ‘aiga and be considered customary village land. No longer freehold. Deathbed statements are taken very seriously in Samoan custom.’

‘Are they in the right?’ Jeanie was more interested than concerned.

It would be an interesting case. One would assume Gertrude was in the right. But this was in the early days of independence and there might be a shift in legal opinion. It would certainly help Gertrude’s position if she had family to inherit the plantation. One would expect her to have the right to pass on the land. It was willed to her. But there were other issues to consider: Had the deathbed wish been witnessed? Would Tiresa’s ‘aiga have some claim under the Family Protection Act?

‘I won’t even hazard a guess,’ I said. ‘At any rate the case will be relished by all parties. Don’t expect an early decision.’

‘Enough, enough!’ called Simone. ‘Let us remember please that the aunt is still alive! Hamish you are boring them to death.’

I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t. They needed to know. Possibly I was boring Simone to death.

She tapped me smartly on the top of my head. ‘We must go out! There is devastation outside and you are chewing away at lands and titles. Let us find what is left of the garden and the town.’

She had a point. The hurricane. This was two days after the storm, and still radio and power were cut. The only way to find out any news was to go on foot. John and Jeanie came with us as we picked our way over fallen trees and waded through standing water. In the distance we heard the sound of chainsaws, but our own road was still blocked by a fallen mango tree. The sun was out again and the evaporating water made the air almost unbearably humid, even for Simone and me. Jeanie’s dark hair was clinging to her cheeks. By the time we reached the waterfront, John was flushed and panting. I began to think it had been a mistake to come.

‘We will go into Mackenzies,’ decreed Simone, ‘to cool off. It has air-conditioning.’

Not this day. We all gaped to see the windows of the store broken, Beach Road littered with palm leaves, banana boxes, even a canoe or two and chunks of coral flung up by the sea. Waves must have broken right across the road. Three women were sweeping water out of Mackenzies’ door. Simone went to talk to them, then came back with the translation. ‘All the stock’s ruined inside,’ she said. ‘Salt water in everything. And the banana boat so recently arrived.’ She threw her hands about in dismay, ‘Even so, there have been looters. They should know better!’

I think she would have stayed to help guard the ruined merchandise, if I hadn’t pulled her away. Simone’s indignation gets the better of her sometimes.

The water in the lagoon, usually crystal clear and calm, slopped and heaved, awash with debris – whole coconut palms, rubbish from goodness knows where, a couple of dead pigs. Out on the reef, the usual dull roar of breaking surf was now deafening. Normally we would see a demure frill of white foam out there. Now, two days after the storm, the ocean rollers were still immense, the spume leaping high. For once the barrier of the reef, so often a nuisance, appeared a comforting guardian.

Most of the stores and offices were closed; the windows of the High Commission still shuttered. Town workers would be back in their villages clearing up their own homes. The thatched roof of the open market had collapsed, entombing an ancient bus lying forlorn on its side. The humidity and heat blanketed us, dragging at our spirits. John, particularly, looked ready to drop. No information to be gleaned here. Apia seemed empty. Nothing to be done but to struggle home again.

‘Will this be bad for the island?’ Jeanie asked as we plodded uphill.

Simone flung an arm towards a fallen clump of banana trees. ‘Disastrous. Catastrophic! What will they eat?’ Her white hair, silvered with damp and snaking around her head like Medusa, gave her the appearance of a prophet of doom.

‘We don’t know yet how much of this island, or of Savai‘i has been hit,’ I said. ‘Perhaps our district and Apia suffered the worst.’ I was thinking of Gertrude’s plantation. How ironic if it was destroyed, after all her machinations.

The next day we learned that Gertrude’s plantation had survived remarkably well, but that the old lady herself had died in the storm. Reports of her death were disturbing to say the least. It seemed Stuart had been negligent in some way. Versions of his behaviour ranged from careless to criminal. I never really learned the truth. The trouble with a small town is that everyone takes an interest and everyone has an opinion. Truth becomes distorted very quickly. One could write a paper on it.

Certainly Roper’s behaviour later, at the reading of the will, was appalling. As Gertrude’s executor, I invited them and Tiresa over for tea at our home. The office rooms I share had been damaged in the storm. Simone laid on home-made liver pâté with breadfruit chips (I would have preferred a good date scone) and it all started pleasantly enough. Stuart had come down from the plantation the previous day. He didn’t look good. I put it down to the strain of the death and the funeral, but Simone was sure he’d been drinking.

Gertrude had been quite cunning. She left a small separate estate – copra and a few cattle – to the Levamanaias. It was negligible as far as income went, compared to the cacao plantation, but might stand in her favour if the will were contested. The rest – the plantation, the plant and both her houses simply went to her nephew John O’Dowd.

Tiresa, magnificent in a flowered puletasi, a necklace of cowrie shells hanging over her ample bosom, flowery woven hat perched on her pile of grey hair, grunted ominously. ‘Let me see, Hamish.’

I handed her the document. I’m not sure the old lady read English but she studied it with great care. Tiresa was no fool. ‘That little coconut plot is worth nothing,’ she pronounced in her deep man’s voice. ‘We will contest this of course.’

She rose, thanked Simone for the food, which she had not touched – a deliberate insult, according to Simone – and stumped out.

I looked over, smiling, at John and handed him the document. He nodded, read it carefully and handed it back. What a formal fellow he was! At the funeral he had spoken a few quiet words, recited a piece from Robert Louis Stevenson, and then withdrawn into himself.

‘Let me see!’ Roper shot out a hand and grabbed at the will. His face had gone a dark red. ‘That’s not what she promised!’ he positively shouted. ‘It was to be left to all three of us jointly!’

I put on my most formal voice. Roper’s manner was most unsuitable for this occasion. ‘My client believed it safer to leave the entire estate to one person alone.’

‘It’s here!’ the rude fellow ranted. ‘You’ve crossed it out. Look at my name here! This is tampering!’

‘My client requested the change. You will see her signature, and mine and another witness to the deletion.’ I admit I took a small pleasure in pointing out the detail. ‘And the deletion duly dated,’ I added. Simone said I was outrageously smug. Perhaps I was, but the fellow riled me. I held out my hand for the will and had to wait several stormy moments before he complied.

Jeanie put a comforting hand on his, then turned to me. ‘He’s had a hard time recently. The plantation is damaged; there is much to do.’

Such a small woman – so fragile to look at. And yet there was a quality in her that I found hard to pinpoint. As if a fine bright line of unbreakable steel ran through her.

Roper calmed at her words. He was a strange man. Simone declared he needed Jeanie and loved her in a possessive kind of way. I only saw him as a self-centred bully.

‘But can’t you see?’ he said to her, pleading for her to take his part.

‘It’s alright,’ she said calmly. ‘Father has inherited. It’s all in the family.’

She might have been speaking to a child.

Elena

Back in Wellington, I had reports to write and meetings to attend. Project Jeanie had to take a back seat for a week or two. I thought about her from time to time though. During the slow drone of departmental meetings I would gaze out the window of our high rise office block, watch the cold waves driving up the harbour and think back to those warm, scented months in the islands when we became inseparable friends. Or were we? Obviously not, if Jeanie was prepared to break our friendship so thoroughly. Now that I had found her, I needed to know. My mind kept drifting back to those days, looking for clues.

I remember seeing Jeanie for the first time at my impossible Great Aunt Gertrude’s welcome party. What a charade! Gertrude had never invited Tiresa, Teo or me to anything before. Not once, although our family home was only a few miles away on the coast. This time we were invited simply to view her triumph – the discovery of a family to inherit her precious plantation. Everything was arranged to make clear the divide between European status Samoans and those of us who live fa‘asamoa. Gertrude even removed the flower Jeanie had put behind her ear! Teo saw that too and egged me on to welcome her with a little siva. Provocative, but what the hell. (Hamish would call it mischievous!) And Jeanie loved it! Her big eyes alive at the sight of the two of us swaying and whooping. She was itching to join in, it was written all over her, the way her arms twitched and her feet shifted. I knew immediately that we would get on well. What was it about her? Her size, I suppose, was the first thing you noticed. So small and fine boned. I thought of a trim and delicate wading bird. Then her eyes – large and dark, not Chinese like her father’s, but a little pointed in the outer corners. Bright teardrops lying on their sides, with a fine dark brush line above. Such beautiful eyebrows! I don’t think she knew how lovely she was. I never saw her preen or flirt. But we got on well from that first day. Our physical difference was no barrier – quite the opposite. I think she enjoyed my size and solidity, as I loved her delicacy.

Gertrude, her old, blue eyes cold as New Zealand winter, led the newcomers away towards a group of palagi. My great aunt belonged back in the nineteenth century – was born in it and never progressed out into the modern world. It made me mad to see the way she seated Tiresa and our patele on the mats with the untitled people. But then later Jeanie came and sat with us. She wanted to know more about the Samoans at the party, what we did, who we were.

Teo looked away, wouldn’t answer. He tended to smoulder, back then, in the presence of palagi. Silly boy. He had spent the last eight years at an expensive boarding school in New Zealand, perfectly happy to socialise with well-heeled white boys, but as soon as he was back in the islands, his old inherited prejudices took over again.

I dug Teo sharply in the ribs. Jeanie wasn’t to blame for our family’s misfortunes (twelve dead in the flu and two gunned down by New Zealand military on that infamous day during the Mau). Teo frowned at me and turned his back on Jeanie. My mother clearly approved, patted his thigh, which made him turn back again to us! Oh what a mixture he was then, my young brother! Wayward, spoiled by our mother, full of half-baked political resentments, yet under all that, a sweetness that one had to hope would eventually come to the fore.

Soon we were all three chatting and laughing. Jeanie had that special quality of being able to draw people easily into conversation. She was genuinely interested – in the people she met, in Samoa’s history and customs, in the politics of Samoa’s new independence. My ridiculous brother forgot all his resentment and put on a great show of charm, boasting about his political science degree, offering to take her on a tour of the island in his new car, laughing in his high, silly way and slapping his thigh. Unfortunately, he was very attractive to women. Tiresa was about to lead him away when Jeanie’s wretched husband did the same to her.

‘You are being discourteous to Gertrude,’ he said, in a loud hectoring voice. ‘Come and take your proper place.’ No word of greeting to us. Jeanie smiled her apology and went with him – a relief to Tiresa, who had Teo earmarked for an important marriage and wanted no hint of flirtatious behaviour to be witnessed by the patele.

Proper place, he said! Jeanie had been sitting among high-born Samoans. Stuart Roper would have to learn a few manners if he was to settle in the islands. We were an independent country now and fa‘asamoa was the proper way of life.

Our patele, of course, made great play of the hurricane being God’s punishment on all sinners, as witnessed by the fact that the LMS pastor’s house collapsed and his survived. A triumph for the Catholics. My mother, Tiresa, joined in the orgy of incriminatory pronouncements, solemnly claiming that Gertrude’s death was a punishment from on high for her shameful treatment of her own ‘aiga at the feast.

‘She ignored our pule, seated us in a position not befitting. So!’ Tiresa truly believed this. She loved to make spooky proclamations about the wrath of God. Naturally, as a devout churchgoer and generous contributor to the patele’s lavish way of life, she expected the Lord’s wrath to mirror her own.

‘It was no accident the banana palm fell just then,’ she said. ‘The finger of God struck it down in punishment!’ Tiresa wagged her own finger at me, to make sure I took note (and renounced my sinful ways).

It had taken two days for news of the accident to reach us. Our own village was badly hit – seven fale had lost their roofs, all the falela‘iti‘iti‘i collapsed into the lagoon, their fragile rickety walkways now an undignified heap of broken poles rising from the shallow water like the bones of a beached whale. We would have to go back to relieving ourselves in the bush and that could create its own problems. Already I was designing an education programme. But in those first days no one had time to worry about problems in other areas. We were cut off anyway – no radio, roads blocked. Nearly the entire banana crop for our village was gone. We were busy picking what we could, storing the green bunches in pits. An old matai said they used to make masi – a sort of fermented, rotted banana mush, which would last months in the ground, but none of us fancied the sound of it. How were we going to feed all the families? Most of the breadfruit trees were gone too. The taro survived, but banana and breadfruit were the staple.

On the third day my cousin Samasoni battled his way down through our devastated banana plantation in search of me. He arrived, sweating and scratched, with the news that Gertrude was desperately ill and needed a doctor. Would I come?

‘Things are bad up there,’ he whispered. ‘A person like you should be there.’ This whetted my curiosity, as he knew it would.

What a nightmare trip back inland! The track had virtually disappeared under a tangle of vines and fallen debris. Suffocating damp rose from the ground clogging our lungs. I had to stop often to lean against a tree and cough. We could have been breathing pure water. Samasoni went ahead, hacking with his bush knife, but, even so, it took three aching hours to cover what should have taken a quarter of that.

Gertrude lay still on her bed, hardly raising a hump under a snowy sheet. The housegirl waved a fan back and forth over her body. Perhaps stirring the heavy air brought some relief, but I doubted it. The old lady looked dead. Waxy pale, scarcely breathing. I took her pulse. It was there, fluttering weakly like a trapped moth. The arm was bruised from shoulder to wrist and badly swollen below the elbow. Surely broken.

Stuart Roper sat slumped in a chair in a corner of the room. He looked dreadful – unshaven, his clothes dirty, face haggard. A rifle was propped against his chair, which I found odd. Had he been threatened? Surely he need not keep discipline with a gun?

‘What happened?’ I asked.

He spoke belligerently. ‘A clump of banana trees came down on her in the storm.’

‘Good heavens!’ I said. ‘What on earth was she doing out in all that?’ Perhaps I spoke too sharply. Of course I meant ‘How could you have let an old lady go out in a hurricane?’.

He stood up, facing me like a cornered animal. ‘She had her own reasons I suppose. How would I know? She didn’t say. Why does everyone blame me?’

There was fierce anger in his words, but something desperate too. I turned back to the old lady; lifted the sheet. No external bleeding, but other parts of her body were badly bruised too. I suspected broken ribs. What could I do? I had pethedrine with me and could have injected it, but the drug might well stop that tiny heartbeat.

As I stood, undecided, Gertrude opened her eyes. Her breath came in shuddering rasps. ‘Stuart,’ she whispered.

He came forward eagerly, touched her hand, quite gently, I thought.

But Gertrude’s gaze was pure hate. ‘Damn you,’ she croaked, ‘you were supposed to be helping me.’ And then added, mysteriously, ‘Hamish was quite right.’

Those were her last words, spoken with her last breath.

Stuart knelt by the bed and cried. He was drunk – we could all smell the whisky on him. I thought at the time he was genuinely grieving; perhaps he was. But looking back now, I would not grace him with fine feelings. I imagine he was crying for himself – his shame.

It turned out Gertrude had been pinned for six hours under a collapsed clump of banana palms in her back yard while the storm raged and lashed. Being old and weak she could not pull free, but any able-bodied man could have rescued her. By the time a worker found her, she was close to death. Samasoni told me the sorry story. He had no love for the old lady – she was as sparing with her praise as she was with her purse – but he had a certain respect for his boss.

‘No way to die,’ he told me sadly. ‘Alone all that time. I heard that banana come down and thought no more of it. Trees were crashing everywhere. But where was the son-in-law? How is it possible he didn’t check on her?’

Stuart had stayed the night in Gertrude’s house with her. Or, obviously, without her. The stupid – or criminally negligent – fellow had found Gertrude’s supply of imported whisky and drunk himself silly. He was still incoherent when the plantation workers brought her in, dripping wet and bloody, only semi-conscious.

It soon got out that Stuart Roper had been damned by the old lady’s dying words. Differing and increasingly bizarre versions of Gertrude’s death spread like a plague. Stuart Roper was determined to inherit the plantation so had deliberately left her to die; Stuart had suggested she go out to check on her precious sacks of beans, then shut her out of the house; Stuart had pushed her down the stairs and then disguised his actions by cutting down a banana tree and dumping it on her.

Drunk and negligent were just as culpable in my book.

We buried her next to her husband behind the house. Hardly anyone came – the roads were too difficult, and let’s face it, Gertrude had not been loved. John O’Dowd and Jeanie managed to drive up with Hamish and Simone. Poor John wept like a child to see his aunt dead. It was touching – he’d only known her a few weeks, but clearly she meant a great deal to him. Such a shame. Maybe he could have sweetened the old dragon in her last years with a bit of family devotion. All her babies died in the flu epidemic. John said a few words and the palagi minister read the rites. A short, insignificant sort of burial, by Samoan standards. Sad.

Stuart Roper stayed on in the house, alone, drinking. The workers continued to clean up the plantation, but they took their orders from Samasoni, not Stuart.

I kept wondering about Jeanie. Surely living with her husband must be a nightmare?

A few weeks after the hurricane, Teo announced that he was sick of clearing away debris – too depressing! He had the idea to take Jeanie and her father out to see the archaeological site near our village. They should know something of our past, he said, if they were going to settle here. Teo would have had other reasons – an attractive girl; a chance to make an alliance if the inheritance went against us; but he wasn’t completely wayward and wild as some of the elders would have it. He was passionate about the dig, and not only because the young archaeologist was an attractive palagi woman. He had a genuine interest in what our past might have been. His views often flew in the face of the elders who offered rather ridiculous explanations for the existence of the great stone mounds. And being Teo, he didn’t hesitate to point out the flaws in the views of our patele and our most senior matai. Which didn’t help Tiresa’s promotion of her son for a good title.

Teo was in Apia with the truck, having just delivered a small number of banana to the wharf. The harvest this time was pitiful. The ship might not even arrive next month, some said, if the crop didn’t increase. But how could it increase? The situation worried me. My work would suffer too, if shipments weren’t regular. Hurricane relief supplies were coming we were told, but where were they?

Teo drove up Leifiifi Road to the hospital at Moto‘otua, where I had an office, and danced around in the drive until I noticed him. What a show-off he was in those days!

‘Come out to the dig!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s take Jeanie and her father.’

No mention of the husband, I noticed. It turned out Teo knew Stuart was up at the plantation. No one would want to be crammed in the truck with that boor. He had ruffled feathers on more than one occasion already with his insensitive remarks and loud views. I had been invited to a tennis afternoon with some of the palagi community and was partnered with the wretch. He cheated blatantly! Had to win at all costs. In front of everyone’s eyes called balls out that were clearly in; abused me for missing a shot when the ball was in his area of the court; argued with the other pair over silly little details. Lord, it was embarrassing. How that nice Jeanie came to marry him was a complete mystery. I wanted to find out.

‘I’ll come,’ I shouted through the mosquito screens. ‘Give me half an hour to finish this report.’ In Samoa such impulses are possible. ‘And tell them to bring a lavalava. Or togs. We’ll go to Papaseea afterwards!’

Teo gave me the thumbs up and headed down to the Ropers’ place. He came roaring back, horn blaring, with Jeanie. No father. Not very proper, especially with half the hospital staff and a good number of the patients watching through the screens.

‘I’ve brought a picnic,’ said Jeanie, smiling to see me. ‘Sandwiches, some cake, mangos and pawpaw. And lime juice. Will that do?’

She was learning our ways fast. Every occasion needs a feast! I liked this girl immensely. Evidently the father was busy with a Samoan lesson.

‘If we are to make our lives here he wants to be fluent in the language. Hamish is teaching him,’ Jeanie said. She grinned, ‘But I think also he knows he would not enjoy bumping over rough roads and climbing around an archaeological site in the heat.’

‘You won’t mind?’

‘Oh, no. Simone was right – two weeks and I seem to be acclimatised. Already I find the air-conditioning inside MacKenzies uncomfortable.’

She was proud of her easy adaptation to our climate; enjoying the sights and sounds. On that bouncing trip into the site, she chatted about her father, her training as a nurse (that interested me! I resolved to use her), her excitement over this new turn her life had taken. Never a word about her husband, I noticed. She was full of questions too. Such an alive person!

The three of us were crammed into the cab of the truck. Just as well the father didn’t come or I would have been roughing it in the open tray. Jeanie sat between us. Teo’s eyes constantly left the rough track to give her the full benefit of his charming smile.

‘There’s a big project on just now,’ he explained, ‘to find out how our ancestors lived. I help with this one, now and then.’

‘Now and then’ would have been Teo’s favourite phrase in those days. Never a full-time commitment. A bit of this, a bit of that, and nothing much in between, while I walked straight into a strenuous full-time job with the World Health Organization. The archaeological thing was interesting though. New Zealanders and Americans working together to uncover and document as many of the overgrown old mounds as they could. Some time ago, it seems, our people lived inland and built these huge stone mounds, a bit like pyramids, but flat-topped. This one was star-shaped. Today, almost all our villages are strung out along the coast, and none of the stone foundations of our fale are anything like the size and scale of these mounds. Even our many and monumental churches can not rival the mounds. Teo had his theories.

‘I’ll bet they were for ritual sacrifice. Our elders don’t want to think we might have killed other humans and offered them to the gods.’ He laughed. ‘Or, horror of horrors, eaten our enemies like the Maori. But why else would they build such things? One old matai says they were platforms for catching birds, can you imagine! In the middle of a village! They just don’t like to admit that they haven’t a clue.’

‘Teo,’ I said, ‘have some respect. You’ll be shocking our guest.’

Teo put an easy arm around Jeanie’s shoulders and drove one-handed. ‘Am I shocking you, teine?’

‘And don’t call her teine. Jeanie is a perfectly good name.’

Teo laughed and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I will call you Siene then, how about that?’

Jeanie, it seemed, liked it quite a lot. She laughed along with him and let his arm lie where it was. My cheeky brother, honestly. She was married and he practically engaged to a very high-born taupou. If my mother had been there she would have given him a good slapping, grown lad though he was.

We ground our way over the roughest of tracks, ploughing over saplings and weeds, bottoming on great boulders, lurching madly from side to side. Teo was forced to return the wayward hand to the wheel. For some reason we were all three madly happy. I started up a Beatles song, ‘Penny Lane’, and the three of us roared it out, harmonising at will, la-la-ing when we forgot the words. Above us and around great trees leaned in. A wild, forgotten area.

Finally we bounced our noisy way into the clearing. It was a truly impressive sight; much more so than I remembered. Several small mounds had been uncovered. As the truck engine steamed and gurgled, we stared out through the windscreen at a great stone heap stretching up higher, I would have said, than a three-storey building. The carefully stacked boulders of volcanic rock stood out black and shocking against the green riot of the bush. Here and there in the clearing, smaller stone mounds were half cleared, vines and creepers still clinging, like unruly hair, to their sides. Something like steps or a pathway formed a slash in the side of the great mound facing us. Clearly people had once climbed up this to the flat platform on top. The small hairs on the back of my neck pricked. Tears welled. There was something huge here in the air. I thought of giants, of half-human rulers like the Greek heroes. Of mighty deeds. Who were they? Who on earth were they, these ancestors of mine, and why did I not celebrate them and their deeds? How had we forgotten? Why had we deserted this inland place, which they had built with such care? Why had we moved to the coast?

Jeanie touched my arm. She had noticed my tears. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘if I can feel some part of this, what must you be feeling?’

She understood.

Over to the right was a small canvass lean-to, protecting a table and chair and a few instruments. Further away, three lads were slashing at vines and weeds that seemed to be hiding a smaller mound.

‘I can’t believe it,’ breathed Jeanie. ‘However could they get the stones up there? It’s like the pyramids!’

Teo didn’t seem so moved by the enormity of what we saw. ‘We’ve always been mighty builders,’ he said. ‘Look at our churches!’ He, of course, was prepared to take the credit on behalf of his ancestors. He jumped down from the truck and helped Jeanie out, leaving his sister to make her own way.

‘Come and meet Janet, the archaeologist,’ said Teo. ‘She’ll be here somewhere. You’ll like her.’ He spoke as if he owned her and the whole project, while in fact he had probably put in a couple of desultory hours waving a slasher. Teo is no expert with the bush knife, or anything else – except charm and driving too fast.

Probably my memory is too harsh. The truth is that for a while he led Jeanie away and left me behind.

For some time I stood in front of that great mound, mesmerised, listening for the voices of ghosts. I felt them; their tombs would be here, their spirits wandering among the trees. Were they angry that we no longer visited this place? Did they scorn our small villages on the coast and our palagi churches?

I walked slowly up to the mound, and then began to climb, step by rugged step, until I reached the top. It had been well cleared of debris; the platform of interlocking stones revealed. Here and there were holes, which might have once housed poles for a giant roof. At certain points stone seats or tables were set into the platform. Perhaps altars? One seemed particularly suited for a normal human being. I sat and waited, looking in to the dense foliage of the canopy. Tell me; talk to me!

An army of cicadas filled the air, their high-pitch scream and click so familiar that normally I would not notice. That day nothing was normal. I craved silence. I needed the ancestors to speak. For years I had been schooled in New Zealand; had learned palagi subjects and palagi ways. Here was evidence of an important forgotten Samoan history; of pagan ceremony, perhaps; of a grand village where my ancestors lived and loved and fought before the missionaries encouraged us to forget the past.

I must have fallen into some kind of trance. I opened my eyes to find Jeanie looking anxiously at me.

‘Elena! You look so pale. Should you be sitting in the open sun like this?’

She took me gently by the arm and led me to a shaded area of the platform. We sat together on a stone slab, neither of us speaking. Below, we could see Teo and Janet examining drawings at the little table. They seemed so distant and unimportant.

‘The cicadas!’ said Jeanie finally.

‘Yes. Are they sending us some coded message?’

Jeanie smiled and shrugged. A little later she announced, ‘This was a place for kings. They were set high here.’

I liked the poetic way she spoke. She seemed sure and strong that day. We felt the same mystical power of the place – Lo taua mea lilo.

‘What?’ Jeanie touched my arm. We were so close there in the suffocating, windless heat, above the ordinary world yet enclosed by trees and the sound of the cicadas! ‘What did you just say?’ she repeated.

I hadn’t meant to speak out loud. ‘It was just something I felt. You and me, Jeanie. Our secret place. It’s not secret, we are not alone, but I feel we are sharing something mysterious.’

No doubt I was over-emotional, tearful – I was much younger then – but she understood. Such opposites in many ways, Jeanie and me; she so neatly made and me so big-boned. Her sandalled feet looked so vulnerable beside my broad brown paddles; her fingers disappeared inside my wide palm. We held hands and sat there until Teo shouted from below that we should come down and take our picnic to Papaseea.

Sliding Rock was not far away. In our family we consider our district, Tuamasaga, to be the most beautiful in all the islands. Those from Apolima would argue of course, but I consider our bush is richer, our mountain, Fao, is definitely the tallest, our plantations the most productive – and of course, we have not only beautiful Palolo Deep on the coast, but the lovely cool Papaseea Falls among the trees. Inland, the water is crystal clear and cool, while the shallow water of the lagoon is so tepid it’s scarcely worth bathing. At Papaseea, the stream, coming fast from the mountains, has smoothed the rocks to glass. In the whole descent over the waterfall at this spot, there is not one sharp projection.

I have never been one for acrobatics, but Teo was out of the truck with a whoop, bounding up the rocks, securing his lavalava as he ran. At the top he raised his arms, dancing and showing off, then hurled himself at the slide. Down he came on his backside, leaving little of his body to the imagination, twisting with the natural chute to crash into the cool water of the pool. That Teo! How different he is now! He burst, then, from the water, sleek and brown as a trout, laughing and inviting Jeanie to join in.

And she did of course. Jeanie would try anything. Down she came sliding, out of control, twisting to land back-first, feet in the air. Teo, naturally, was on hand to scoop her up, make sure she was unhurt; to hold her for longer than necessary, smoothing back her wet hair. They laughed together, almost kissing I thought. I scolded Teo in our language, called to Jeanie to join me where I floated, more decorously, in the shallows. But she pleaded for another turn and ran up with Teo. They came down laughing and shouting, hand in hand. Well they were young. We all were.

Teo felt it too – that special closeness with Jeanie. With Teo, of course, sexual attraction was part of the mix, but it was not only that. We two were newly returned to Samoa after years away; were easing back into fa‘asamoa. Jeanie was completely new to it, but open as the breeze and eager to learn. Her freshness and excitement, her questions – and her friendship – helped us accept, when we had both tended to be critical of the old ways, of the conservative outlook, of the strict hierarchy. We had come back feeling like outsiders, but in some way that is difficult to explain, Jeanie helped us bridge the two cultures.

We are an odd mixture, Teo and I. Our palagi education sitting like a smart coat on top of our Samoan upbringing. I suppose you might say that I have kept my smart coat, changed it perhaps for an even smarter one, while Teo has shrugged his off. Or has he? Perhaps he has been more successful in integrating the two. Back in those days when we first returned to the islands, he could be so angry against palagi ways. At others he would rail against our own antiquated customs! He was just a wild lad.

We were brought up to respect and love our own ancestry. Our father, Samuele, was a very proud Samoan, proud of our heritage, our customs and our ways. I think now that perhaps he was very intelligent, though he had practically no palagi education. He knew all the old stories, though, and the legends of our ancestors. Teo and I used to love listening to him in the evenings, in the big fale, with all the ‘aiga, listening while he told the stories. He would lean his back against his particular pole, the low light from the hurricane lamp above him shining on his oiled skin and handsome face. We only knew him young and handsome. But even in his forties he could bring those old stories to life better than any older matai. He would use a high voice for the women, and drop his voice down for the dramatic bits. Oh we loved it! Teo is five years younger than me but Samuele could hold us all – little children and old women – with his tales. Some nights the patele would take over the storytelling and try to bring the bible tales to life. He didn’t have our father’s knack, though. Of course we listened politely, and then yawned, and then fell asleep on the mats, with Tiresa our mother giving us the odd slap with her fan if we wriggled in our sleep.

Sometimes Samuele would tell of more recent times. We never asked for the flu epidemic story – it was too horrible – but my father would raise a finger at our complaints and say it was part of our family’s history; that loss and death must be honoured as much as the happy times. I would lower my head and try not to hear his words. The picture he drew was too clear. I could see – smell even – the dead bodies. Whole families lying dead together in their fale. One of Samule’s ‘aiga, a high-born matai, had died in Apia while visiting there. My father almost chanted that part of the story. From that village – close to ours, the people sent a fautasi to collect his body. Forty-eight strong men set off, rowing the funeral boat, slowly so that villagers could send their prayers and blessings with them. None returned. All dead, chanted my father, real tears rolling down his cheeks, every oarsman dead within one day or the next. So quickly did the flu strike. Some of the women would wail as they do at a funeral, crying for their own family deaths. I would put my hands over my ears, and Teo would try to run away.

But Teo would always hang on every word of the Mau stories. Samuele told those with vigour and pride. His father, our grandfather, was killed on that dreadful day of the march. No one was allowed to forget that! Teo loved to hear of the shootings and the anger of it all. We all did. Old and young grew silent when Samuele told it. He made us see the great column of marching people, upright and dignified in their Mau uniform – a purple lavalava with a white stripe, and, for the Mau police, a purple headband. Samuele had been a young man of nineteen, marching proudly alongside his father down Beach Road. The march had been banned, but the people felt so strongly, said Samuele, that they felt they must march, in peace, to show their dismay. Many of their matai had been deported – sent away from their own homeland to a cold and lonely place, or even imprisoned in New Zealand! (A gasp of horror from the audience.) Many respected matai had been stripped of their titles! My father would pause for the groan of outrage; would perhaps give a single heavy clap to show his respect, and we would all follow suit. Then, on with the story. Sometimes he would use little stones to create a map of the roads. Here were the marchers; here the soldiers, waiting in a side road; here the gunmen on the verandah of the police station, with their deadly Lewis gun. In my father’s version the marchers were all peaceful, and perhaps they were. The Mau movement was determinedly a passive-resistance one. He made us see the pandemonium, the fear of the marchers when the gunfire rang out, the bullets raining down from above, the women and children who had simply been watching the march, showing solidarity with their men-folk, screaming and rushing to hide in the market only to be trapped there and wounded themselves.

It was such a widespread movement, the Mau, and so heartfelt for so long, that I suppose every child in Samoa was brought up on that story, as were Teo and I. And the tales of the men hiding in the bush. Of the women organising the passive resistance. And the funny story of the time some Mau members were arrested and then hundreds more came forward to offer themselves for arrest! The prisons couldn’t cope. The men were put into a fenced corral which had the sea on one side. They would swim home to see to their gardens and harvest the bananas, and spend time with their wives and then swim back again! We all laughed at that one!

I remember one special night when Samuele told this story of Black Saturday. He had just reached the part where the great leader Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III walked into the angry crowd with his hands up, beseeching them to be peaceful. The New Zealand police force shot him in the back. And when our grandfather, with others, rushed to cradle the dying man, they shot him too. My father told it with great sadness, not in anger. But young Teo jumped to his feet, in front of the whole family and shouted. ‘We should kill them back! Why didn’t you kill them all?’

My father gave his son a slap, then, for interrupting the story and for showing anger.

‘Tupua Tamasese was not of our family as you know, son,’ he said. ‘We are Malietoa, but we are related through our noble blood. We respect Tupua Tamasese’s sayings as of our own. Remember his dying words.’ And he looked at all his family expectantly. We chanted the words with him. ‘My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.’

I loved my father. He was a gentle and wise man. He was among the many who were wounded that day – a bullet to his leg – but I never heard him call for revenge for his father’s death or his own wound. Certainly he spoke sternly about that time; about the stupidity of the New Zealand administrators, and his earnest hope for independence. Alas he never lived to see that day. A simple scratch from live coral; a neglected infection from the poison; a fever from the infection, which was wrongly diagnosed as flu. He died in our own fale when he should have been in hospital. It was his preventable death that encouraged me, I think, to become a doctor. Perhaps his desire for independence and his telling of the story of our grandfather’s death led Teo towards political science and gave him a taste for political activism in those early days.

I asked Tiresa why she let us both go to New Zealand to study. I would have thought she harboured some anger against that country. But even my feisty mother was pragmatic on that point. She looked up from her plaiting – she and a group of friends were working on a fine mat.

‘Your father would have wished it,’ she said, ‘and also you won scholarships. Why waste good money?’ And after a few more tiny strands had been painstakingly incorporated, ‘And also what would all my friends here say if I kept you at home? Such an honour, such clever children and I turn it down? Eh? Their fans would be slapping me all day!’ Laughter all round, and agreement, then on with the weaving. ‘And now here you are,’ she said with a proud wag of her head, ‘at independence time, all ready to take over from the palagi! Your father and grandfather will be looking down from heaven and praising me for my good sense!’

Such hopes riding on our education. It was a burden as well as a gift. No wonder we felt a little adrift, in those early days of our return. It took Teo some time to lose that palagi student-style outrage and settle into fa‘asamoa. In a way, I suppose I have always fought against the pull. Yes I work for the Samoan community, but I do it from the comfort and stimulation of a larger and more sophisticated New Zealand. Perhaps if Jeanie had stayed, I might have too.

Hamish

Yesterday Simone came into my study with a cutting from the newspaper.

‘Remember that awful Stuart Roper?’

I actually dropped the book I was reading in shock. Simone is uncanny the way she can pick my thoughts. But this, it seemed, was pure coincidence. A friend of hers had sent an article about gardening from the New Zealand Herald – some plant Simone was interested in growing. On the back of the cutting was a photograph of a fattish, seedy-looking man at a business function, glass of champagne in his hand, suit jacket undone and stomach bulging. A drinker’s red face under a shining bald head. Something cosmetic must have been done to his ear – it looked normal. So did the hand that held the glass. The other didn’t appear in the shot. Perhaps that was the missing one. Stuart Roper.

Only part of the article was included. It seemed this was a retirement party put on by the bosses for railway workers who had accepted voluntary retirement. Something like that. So he was still around. I wondered if he had ever remarried. The same self-assured smile; the same belligerent stance.

I nodded, reluctant to speak in case Simone found some clue.

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Jeanie got away.’ She looked at me sharply. ‘We never heard from her.’

‘No.’

‘I was so fond of her.’

I said nothing. The topic had been explored many times in the past, but Simone hadn’t mentioned Jeanie for years.

‘I expect she needed to move right away.’ Simone continued to watch me. My stomach lurched at the thought that she might know something. I had warned Elena off, but that woman could not be trusted to act in good faith.

‘Indeed,’ I said at last, ‘yes. I expect she went overseas. Jeanie was a competent nurse. She could work anywhere.’

Simone made that rumbling in her throat that means she is not satisfied with the answer.

I needed a drink. While Simone prepared our meal, I watched the news. But I was remembering that dreadful time in Apia, over the affidavits, when life began to disintegrate for John and his family.

Was it Jeanie or Simone who bought that huge tuna down at the fish tree? I fancy it was Jeanie, though Simone was equally foolhardy. A whole tuna! I can still see it bulging out of the boot of our car (so perhaps it was Simone?), the tail drooping into the dusty road, the mouth gaping sadly at the sky, the boot lid tied with a piece of cord. The women laughing in triumph at their prize. Usually the fish tree was festooned with little flamboyant reef fish, strung like beads on a strip of pandanus, all bones and little flesh. That day a whole tuna hung there among its tiny relatives, truly a whale among minnows. A young fellow I didn’t recognise stood proudly beside it, flapping at flies with his fan. Proud indeed. Not many would take a paopao beyond the reef to fish. In the old days of course …

We had come down to buy meat as this was WESTEC’s killing day, but the sight of the tuna had the women in raptures. We had to buy it. And despite my protestations, buy it they did, Simone doing the bargaining, Jeanie egging her on. What did they pay for it? Perhaps a whole pound. A bargain anyway, they crowed, as they helped the fisherman heave it into the boot.

‘We’ll have a party!’ cried Jeanie, ‘You must come to us this time. Stuart will butcher the beast, we’ll freeze what we can, give a piece to the housegirl, and then we’ll gorge ourselves on fresh fish till it’s gone!’

Jeanie was radiant that day. I remember clearly her dark eyes shining at the fun of such a daring purchase, she and Simone giggling like naughty schoolgirls at a midnight feast.

‘Father loves fish,’ she said, ‘and so do I. He’ll be so pleased.’

This would be a month or two after Gertrude’s death. John was enjoying getting to grips with the finances of the plantation – often came to me for advice. I wondered how he managed with the workers. His manner would have surprised them after Gertrude – so quiet and tentative. Perhaps he left that part to Stuart, or more likely Samasoni took charge. I had heard things were not so happy up at the plantation, but hoped the rumours would fade.

The night of the tuna feast, Stuart and John were both in town. Thankfully, it was only a small dinner party, given the way it ended. Simone and I, a lady doctor friend of Jeanie’s and a newcomer – a man from the World Health Organization who had come to help with the aftermath of the hurricane. All palagi. Simone took over a large platter of whatever we had in the garden and we all supplied a bottle from our liquor ration. I fancy Stuart had been down to the liquor shed and pleaded an important party because he definitely had more than the monthly ration.

We sat on the verandah drinking. Stuart began as a good host – attentive, friendly, flirting with the lady doctor, but not outrageously so. Simone told me later that there had been some incident at the plantation earlier which had rubbed John and Stuart up the wrong way. A difference of opinion over future directions. I remember her scorn that I hadn’t spotted it. They spoke not one word to each other the whole night, she insisted. John was quiet, I noticed that. Even at the dreadful end, he spoke only the once, and to devastating effect.

Stuart drank whisky all through the meal. Appalling bad taste, given that delicate, meltingly tender flesh. Jeanie had baked a large section of it – as much as she could fit in the oven – and dressed it with coconut cream and lime juice. Simple, fresh, utterly delicious. Most of us drank lime juice or beer with it; Stuart downed tot after tot of neat whisky. His attentions to the lady doctor became loud and embarrassing; he crammed the fish into his mouth without comment. He could have been eating tough WESTEC beef, instead of this gift from the sea.

Simone, I could see, was becoming dangerously irritated. ‘Is the fish not perfect, Stuart?’ she asked, ice in her voice. ‘Hasn’t Jeanie dressed it beautifully?’

‘Hmm?’ He turned to her with his mouth full. When he laughed, morsels of fish flew onto the table.

‘Your wife,’ Simone continued dangerously, ‘has cooked us a beautiful feast and you do not compliment her?’

Stuart stared at her. Jeanie, coming back from the kitchen, passed behind my wife. I saw her shake her head – a small rather hopeless movement – as she laid a gentle hand on Simone’s shoulder.

‘She knows I hate fish,’ said Stuart, too loudly. Now everyone was listening. ‘She bought the damned thing to annoy me.’ He turned to the lady doctor again and laughed, leaning towards her intimately. ‘She lives to please her father, you see. I don’t come into the equation.’

In the silence that greeted this pronouncement, John cleared his throat and said mildly, ‘Stuart you have had enough to drink. You are embarrassing our guests.’ Then he turned quickly to the World Health Organization expert and asked some diversionary question about the hurricane relief. It was skilfully done and I thought the awkward corner had been turned. Perhaps I was too interested in the expert’s reply to notice Stuart. Simone told me later that he became absolutely still, his face ‘swelling dark and purple like an aubergine’, as the conversation became animated and he sat, ignored even by the lady doctor.

Suddenly he banged his fist on the table, strongly enough to make the glasses jump and bellowed, ‘Here’s a good riddle: What do you get when a Chinese man rapes a half-wit girl? Eh? What do you get?’

He laughed into the silence he had produced. The rest of the guests were merely embarrassed. I was the only one there who knew where this was leading. If only I had been quick-witted or brave enough to intervene. But I remained as tongue-tied as the rest.

‘John O’Dowd, that’s what you get!’ the dreadful fellow shouted. ‘John O’Dowd!’ He raked us all with his bloodshot eyes. For a moment we were all mesmerised. Then the idiot fortunately flung a full glass of whisky into the lady doctor’s lap, jumped up to repair the damage, lost his footing and crashed to the floor. In the ensuing mayhem the drunken outburst was, I hoped, forgotten or at least discounted. Jeanie helped her wretched husband out of the room, while Simone mopped at the lady doctor.

‘What a so rrrrude man!’ she cried. ‘He will regret every word in the morning. Hamish, it is time we went. It’s time we all went.’ She embraced poor, petrified Jeanie, who had returned to the room, loudly praised the meal, hooked an arm under the lady doctor’s elbow and sailed out, leaving me to follow with the hurricane expert. Alas, we were all glad to escape.

Back home, we drank our nightcap – Simone’s concoction of fresh coconut milk and some other secret and no doubt horrifying ingredient – in the dark on the verandah.

‘You knew something about that,’ Simone said. ‘I saw your face.’

I told her then. Described Gertrude’s outburst before the O’Dowd’s arrival. The secret of John’s unconventional birth, of which he seemed to know nothing. Simone, predictably, was aghast. She stormed to her feet, threw the remains of her drink over the railing and stood listening in the steamy dark. For the moment all was silent next door. ‘But there will be storms ahead,’ she warned, as if I were in some way to blame, ‘What broken souls might I need to repair tomorrow? You should have warned me, you stupid man!’

Next morning we were both on the verandah drinking our morning lime juice and reading the Samoa Times. News about the hurricane was still trickling in – it was worse than we had feared. Apia had not taken the full force of the storm. Other areas had suffered dreadfully. Whole villages completely flattened. The majority of both islands’ banana crop destroyed. In the next few months lack of food would become a major problem.

But our attention was soon diverted to the sounds from next door. We could hear the shouts quite clearly. Stuart was in a rage; Jeanie answering defiantly. No word from John O’Dowd. Some accusation we couldn’t catch – not the Chinese rape theme this time. His rage was directed at Jeanie. Surely the man was demented? Then Jeanie’s high voice pleading. ‘Don’t Stuart! Why say such things? Haven’t you done enough? Please!’

A crash and a scream followed. Jeanie’s scream.

‘Hamish, go over there! That monster is beating her!’ cried Simone.

But you can’t interfere with someone else’s domestic life. Or I can’t. What could I do? Stuart is a big, heavy man. In any case we saw him run out of the house a few minutes later, slam the jeep into gear and roar out onto the road, leaving a red dust cloud hanging in the still air.

We watched the house for signs of life. I wouldn’t let Simone storm over there with offers of help. Privacy is precious. ‘They know we’ll help if they need it,’ I said.

‘She could be lying in a pool of blood. He could have killed her!’ Simone stood vigil on the verandah, staring across. ‘I must go to her.’

Then we saw John come out and sit on the cane settee, a glass of something in his hand. The fallen tree partially obscured him but even so I pulled Simone away. He would not be so calm, I said, if anything dreadful had happened to his daughter. Much later, as we ate our meal in the shade of our own verandah he was till there, staring out at nothing in particular. We saw Jeanie bring him a fresh drink, speak to him quietly, but he waved her away. She went back inside. When night fell he was still there. Stuart had not returned.

‘It is very, very bad,’ murmured Simone. ‘John can not cope with all this unpleasantness.’ She rang Jeanie then. I couldn’t prevent it. Jeanie apologised for the shouting. ‘We are alright, thank you.’ she said, and hung up.

‘But her voice was so small, so sad,’ Simone reported. ‘All that brightness gone. She is not at all alright.’

The next couple of weeks I was busy at the Supreme Court. A laughable case: I was defending a pair of lads caught trying to dynamite fish in the lagoon. They were accused of endangering the life of the arresting police officer. The prosecution asserted that the arresting officer had plunged into the lagoon in an attempt to stop the boat and, as he flailed towards them, had to dodge a stick of lighted dynamite thrown by one of the boys. The lad I represented insisted he had thrown a small flotation buoy as the policeman was in difficulty. The other lad said my fellow threw a rock. Both defence and prosecution witnesses kept bursting into giggles. The mother of one of the accused at one stage threw a cloth over her head and shook with laughter. Everyone was enjoying the fun except for the Judge, who became very testy and finally threw the case out which was my ploy all along. But the old boy found a way to show his displeasure with me.

As I was leaving, the Registrar of the Courts called me into his office.

‘This Schroder case,’ he said, ‘Judge is not pleased. Waste of bloody time. Wants it settled out of court.’ He looked at me over his spectacles, the old owl. ‘Family squabble, Hamish, shouldn’t come to court. Get both sides to produce more affidavits. Family conference should settle matters.’

I sighed. The thought of Tiresa and her family in conference with Stuart Roper was not enticing.

‘Judge’s orders, Hamish. Settle it. Isaia Young is representing the Levamanaias. He’s agreed. He’d be free Friday morning, ten o’clock.’

So family conference it was. And a disaster.

On Friday we all assembled in my office. On our side, John, Jeanie, Stuart and my secretary. Isaia Young had brought in Tiresa, Teo and their senior matai, Susuga Lotoifale. I didn’t like the look on Isaia’s face. He had some trump card up his sleeve. He was a bright young lawyer, Isaia, one of the new breed: well educated in New Zealand. No doubt he would be fast-tracked to the bench. And probably rightly so. It was high time the bench acquired a browner look.

To be honest, there was not a lot more we could produce in the way of affidavits. I again produced copies of Schroder’s will and of Gertrude’s. One of the senior kiln driers at the plantation – not related to the Levamanaias – had reluctantly agreed to signing a statement to the effect that John was a competent manager and seemed interested in continuing Gertrude’s work. As I read the statement, Tiresa muttered and waved her hands around, dismissing Peseta as a worthless traitor who would regret his defection in the months to come. I swore to the fact that John was indeed the son of Gertrude’s sister, Bridget, and waved the birth certificate briefly. So far the Levamanaias had not requested to see it. I produced a new affidavit from John, promising to follow Gertrude’s instructions for the good management of the plantation and to continue the practice of employing members of Tiresa’s ‘aiga. I referred to the fact that Gertrude had left the opposition a small plantation, and that it had been Mrs Schroder’s strong wish that the plantation be managed along palagi lines, not under fa‘asamoa.

Susuga Lotoifale then banged his carved stick on the floor, cleared his throat, and rose to speak. A big, grave man, lacking the light touch of his predecessor in the title. Dressed formally in white shirt, black tie and jacket, black lavalava and sandals, he launched forth into a prayer for reconciliation between the two sides, for God to guide our hearts, and bring us to a satisfactory conclusion. Nods and amens all round. His ensuing speech referred to the boundaries of plantation and village land, the history of the estate, the devastating flu epidemic which prematurely returned to God so many of the family, the sad loss of Gertrude Schroder, and the wish of his ‘aiga to continue her good work on the plantation. Many of the family had worked there for generations. He named the generations. Many had died while working for PJ Schroder. He named the deaths. Many were skilled in the production of excellent cacao, and although the newcomers were all admirable people and welcome into the family, they surely did not have the skill of his ‘aiga, etcetera. After each weighty pronouncement, he paused to wait for my translation. If he considered my translation too short, he waited pointedly for me to add more detail. This was a spoken affidavit, not a written one as requested, and it proceeded for a good hour. As our good Judge knew well that it would.

Of course it all went over the heads of John and his family. John and Jeanie waited politely for my commentary but Stuart became restless; several times he looked rudely at his watch. There is an easy rhythm to these affairs that I had learned to enjoy. Stuart would need to adapt if he was to live here.

Finally the old boy came to his point. He was no fool. He gestured dramatically with his stick. ‘Ta te gase a uluga!’ he cried – literally ‘let us die together’, but in fact a well-worn saying encouraging us to work together for a solution. He proposed that John should retain the house and plant – the kilns, the fermenting vats and drying sheds – while the plantation would be owned by Tiresa and her children who would pay John a fee for processing the cacao and copra. Susuga Lotoifale offered another wise saying, exhorting us to pull hard on the oars together, and sat down heavily.

Tiresa, who had been fanning herself vigorously throughout the speech, now laid down the fan and applauded with a broad smile. Teo appeared to have gone into a trance. Isaia gave me a cheeky wink, gesturing expansively that I should take up the reins.

It was a clever proposal, dividing the operation into the two activities that might appeal to either side, but of course I could not advise John to accept. The fee for processing the crops would be far smaller than the income from the crop itself. Nevertheless, I was bound to translate the suggestion.

Stuart, who had been wriggling and fidgeting for a good half hour, exploded at my words.

‘That’s ridiculous! Tell them so! Daylight robbery!’ or words to that effect. Not at all the proper manner of response. John laid a hand on his son-in-law’s sleeve. ‘Let Hamish conduct this. He will represent us fairly. What do you think Hamish?’

I told them I thought the proposal was unfair but that we should make a counter-proposal. Maybe a small concession: the ten acres of cacao plantation nearest to the Levamanaias’ village, and a commitment to process their cacao without fee. I had had this in mind and had already discussed part of the proposal with John.

Wretched Stuart would have none of it. Neither Jeanie nor John could calm him down. What a liability the man was! He seemed not to care that Teo and Isaia could understand every word, and Tiresa a good part of it. He demanded that we make no concession, suggested that Tiresa’s ‘aiga were greedy and unscrupulous. That we should walk out of negotiations.

Naturally, this behaviour distressed me. It gravely undermined our case. I suggested in my most legal voice that John was my client in this matter and that Jeanie and Stuart should retire and leave the negotiation to their father.

But the damage had been done. Teo jumped to his feet, waving a piece of paper. The young hothead, incensed at Stuart’s slur on his family, shouted that John had no right to the inheritance. ‘Look at the birth certificate! It’s here under our nose!’

There was a moment of silence. The old matai shook his head sadly. Isaia spoke quickly in Samoan to Teo that they had agreed not to use this information. Lotoifale spoke more harshly, berating the boy for an unchristian act.

Teo pleaded with them – in English. A calculated act. Everyone knew, he said, that John was illegitimate, the son of a half-wit, raped by a Chinese man who then committed suicide. Surely this undermined the case for inheritance?

John put out his hand for the birth certificate. In silence I handed him my copy. I believe this was the first time he had set eyes on the document. He read the words.

He looked at me. ‘You knew this?’

I nodded. ‘John, I don’t believe it alters your right to inheritance.’

We all waited in silence.

‘My father committed suicide? After rape?’ His eyes contained such pain it was hard to look at him.

I cleared my throat. ‘Gertrude told me so.’

‘She knew? All knew?’ He looked around the room as if a vast crowd were witness to his shame.

Tiresa rose from her chair, raised her hand dramatically until she was sure we were all paying attention. Then she advanced on poor Teo, gesturing as if to slap him resoundingly once, twice on either cheek. The gesture was not designed to connect and the effect was slightly comic, which I found embarrassing in light of John’s distress.

‘Apologise this moment, shameful boy!’ Tiresa shouted in English. ‘We are not need such dirty tricks to show our right!’

She stood, glowering, until Teo muttered something. I believe Stuart was enjoying the altercation. I heard his chuckle – and no doubt others did too – but John was speaking to me, asking me to conclude the conference as I saw fit. He left on Jeanie’s arm. At the door, Jeanie turned and spoke for the first time. Her words spoke an apology but the anger was sharp and unforgettable.

‘I apologise for my husband’s behaviour, which aroused ill-feeling. Together we have possibly destroyed my father.’

She steered her father out but returned quickly without him. ‘Stuart, you will come too.’

She was furious; you could see it in every line of her little body. Stuart spread his hands, grinned as if sharing a joke with us at her expense, but he went quietly.

In the end, we agreed quickly on new boundaries. No one had appetite for further haggling. The house, plant and the Apia house to John, along with half the plantation; the other half to Tiresa’s children to farm as they wished.

In some ways the hurricane was a boon to me. My legal practice had been declining with the return to Apia of qualified Samoan lawyers, but now there was extra work to be done at the High Commission – assessing the damage, deciding what help New Zealand might offer, distribution of relief aid and so on. I was in demand because of my local knowledge and ability with the language. Suddenly I was fully employed again and the problems of Gertrude’s family faded into the background.

Simone kept in touch with Jeanie though. Stuart had hit her a couple of days after the conference. Her face was badly bruised and her hand bandaged. Simone mothered her, expressed outrage. Jeanie didn’t try to hide the fact, but seemed to shrug it off as unimportant. Simone couldn’t understand her stoicism.

‘She simply changes the subject. What if he comes back and hits you again, I ask. She smiles and shakes her head. Won’t be drawn about the why of it all. My belief is her husband is jealous.’

I had witnessed no cause for jealousy, but of course Simone was out and about more than I. She reported that Jeanie was often in town in the company of Teo and Elena. And more than once with Teo alone.

‘Jeanie loves his fast car. I fear she loves the man a little too.’

One would hardly blame her for looking elsewhere, I suppose. But to look in Teo’s direction was extremely unwise. Teo was so noticeable. And in Samoan terms so eligible.

But of more immediate concern was John’s health. Again, Simone was the one with the information. I suggested ‘Samoa Tummy’. Most newcomers have a bout or two before their stomachs become hardened to the local bugs.

‘No nothing like that,’ Simone said. ‘He has become listless, doesn’t eat well. Has lost interest in the plantation. Even his books lie unread. Jeanie is particularly worried about that.’ Simone eyed me fiercely. ‘But surely it is this terrible news of his birth. That poor man will feel shame, Hamish. Perhaps you might speak to him? The least you could do. You were to blame, chéri, over the birth certificate.’

It’s true. I felt uncomfortable. Simone assured me that it would have been far better had I gently introduced the truth to him at an earlier stage. I’m not entirely convinced that it was my task to do this, but perhaps Simone was right. She usually is.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, eying me fiercely, ‘you might find something local to interest him. Take him to the club.’

Stuart was often away at the plantation, which had not suffered too badly. Cacao trees are relatively low to the ground; Gertrude’s had been protected by tough hedges, and, being further inland, they had escaped the full brunt of the wind roaring in from the sea. But I don’t think John ever went out to the plantation after the conference. I admit I had not found time to talk to him either, despite Simone’s nagging. Mostly Jeanie stayed in Apia too, working with Elena on the filariasis campaign: eradicating that dreadful, disfiguring disease was Elena’s prime responsibility that year. At any rate, Jeanie was not confiding in Simone, which drove my wife mad.

‘Speak to John,’ she urged me again. ‘Let’s have them over for a drink. I’ll take Jeanie out to the garden. You need to apologise you naughty man. He might talk to you – another bookworm.’

We had our drink and our chat. But he never opened up. I’m no good at that sort of heart to heart. We discussed the hurricane damage and the thorny problem of distributing relief food – important issues – but he wasn’t really interested. I told myself that it would be insensitive to bring up the subject of his birth; that general exploration of local issues would be of more comfort to him. Weak excuses for my own social inadequacy.

I was shocked at the change in him. He’d been here only a few months and already his skin had yellowed, his face thinned. He had seemed so alive and proud the day they arrived. I wondered whether malaria had got him. But of course I was wrong. Simone, as usual, had the truth of it. He was sick to the core with shame.

John would not stay after the meal. He pushed away from the table, his dessert untouched, and left, giving some apologetic excuse. Jeanie stayed.

‘I’m so worried about him,’ she said. ‘He’s never been this bad before.’

‘So he is prone to depression?’ Simone does not believe in discrete inquiry where health matters are concerned.

Jeanie smiled at her directness. ‘Yes, a little. But not like this. He won’t eat. He won’t look at me properly. It’s as if he suddenly disliked me.’

Simone shot me a sharp look, but her question was for Jeanie. ‘He has not accepted the truth?’

‘It’s true, then, this story of the rape and the half-wit?’ She addressed this to me.

‘Something of that sort I believe. Gertrude knew, but didn’t want it known.’

Jeanie remained silent for some time. We watched her.

‘Ma chérie,’ said Simone, ‘no one spoke of this to him back in New Zealand?’

‘No. I’m sure not. Granny Stella … I asked her often about his birth parents but she always gave the same reply – a tragic drowning. She adopted him from a convent. She said she never knew the parents’ names.’

Jeanie suddenly grabbed a handful of her hair which fell that day smooth and dark to below her shoulders. ‘I have that Chinese blood too! From a rape of a defenceless mad woman!’

I couldn’t let that go. ‘Gertrude was a prejudiced woman, Jeanie. She may have exaggerated the facts. She may well have distorted them.’

‘You saw the birth certificate.’

‘I did. It stated a young unmarried woman of unsound mind. Rape was not mentioned.’

‘Oh!’ She flung her arms wide. I thought of windblown flowers. ‘They would not write it, but surely …!’ Then, more quietly, ‘My father believes it. Yes. Somehow feels it to be true. That is why he is so lost. After the pride and hope of finding his aunt – this. Stuart told him that Gertrude despised him for his bad blood. That she truly wanted Stuart to run the plantation.’

I sighed. ‘That is not strictly true.’

‘Not strictly? But in part? She despised father?’

How could I hope to answer her probing questions with truth? My dear Simone intervened.

‘My husband is too literal. It is the lawyer in him. Gertrude is dead. Your father is the one needs your care. Let us think of him. First he finds a birth family and an inheritance for you. Now he discovers that the aunt despised him for his Chinese blood. And that he is the son of rape.’

I was cross with Simone for her bluntness. But Jeanie seemed to accept the harsh words. She nodded through her tears.

‘Perhaps we should go back,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Dad. You are right, he was so proud.’ She looked up at me. I had stood, meaning to quieten Simone’s wayward tongue. ‘He likes you, Hamish, admires your knowledge. Do you think you can help him? Oh!’ She pushed back her chair, paced the room like a young caged thing. ‘Oh, I have been enjoying it so much here – the place and the people – that I suppose I’ve ignored my father’s misery!’

Simone held her close, stroked her dark hair. ‘My child, he will be miserable also back home. And you are happy here. We must find a way around this. People will have a new point of gossip next week and John’s parentage will be forgotten. Let us be gentle with the poor man.’ She looked over at me sternly. ‘Hamish will find something for him.’

I nodded. It would be good to make amends.

Simone was not finished with her planning. ‘And you, my dear, must take a little care with your friends. Tongues are wagging over you and Teo Levamanaia.’

Jeanie touched a fading bruise on her cheek. A light brush from those long beautiful fingers. She sighed. ‘He and Elena have been so kind.’

‘Kind, yes, but care is necessary,’ said Simone gently. She touched again the long black hair. It was lovely to see them together – like mother and daughter. My wife had always wanted a daughter but we only made two rather difficult sons. ‘You must know, ma chérie, that their mother has plans for Teo, which do not include a palagi girlfriend.’

Jeanie pulled away. ‘We are just good friends! For heavens’ sake you are as bad as Stuart! Is friendship not allowed then?’

Oh she was fierce, the little tiger, and blushing. More than friendship in her heart, I thought. And Teo, that wild lad, had a reputation already for his wandering eyes. Tiresa would do well to betroth him formally and secure his matai title. I had seen it so many times before – a high-born lad arriving back from school in New Zealand with his tail high and his criticisms of fa‘asamoa broadcast far and wide. Then, when the mantle of a matai title is laid upon him, suddenly he quietens, steadies, settles with a good Samoan wife and begins to express conservative views. Teo would do the same. I had laid a bet with Giles, who thought the boy would never make a leader. We shall see.

But Jeanie might be vulnerable. I did not want to see her hurt.

‘Of course friendship is allowed,’ I said. ‘Just keep an eye out for the mother. She is protective and ambitious.’

Jeanie sighed again. ‘The plantation. I don’t really care about it to be honest.’

Simone snorted. ‘Oho! Gertrude would have washed your mouth with soap!’

I seem to remember Jeanie growling, then – or am I embellishing the memory? Did she really growl? Certainly there were times when she showed a surprising spirit. ‘Stuart would do more than wash my mouth out,’ she said. ‘He likes the plantation and admired Gertrude. But how can I feel for that dead old lady now? Or her cacao trees? She was a monster!’

She went home then. Gave us a peculiar, defiant smile, and ran down the steps. I saw her white dress wavering across the lawn in the moonlight, disappearing through the orchids like a trail of mist.

‘Jeanie could be a dangerous woman,’ said Simone, watching her too. ‘I am a little fearful for her, Hamish. So beautiful; so sad.’

Dangerous! Spirited, yes, but surely never dangerous. But then I could never quite fathom Simone’s pronouncements.

Elena

A Stuart Roper is alive and living in Auckland. I found him in the phone book. Roper is not a common name. It could well be him. So Hamish is right, I must be careful for Jeanie’s sake.

Stuart had such a temper! Once I saw him kick and kick a small dog who had almost tripped him in the market. A little white puppy. It yelped and yapped fit to attract the attention of every soul in the area. Did Stuart care? Not one fig. When an old mango seller shouted at him, he simply shook a fist at her. When I scooped up the pup from under his very toe, he would have gone at me too, if I’d been a smaller person. Those mad eyes! And with everyone watching! The man was not normal.

‘Stupid cur!’ he shouted, whether to me or the dog was unclear. Then he glared at the small muttering crowd and stalked away, completely unrepentant by the look of his swaggering step, one hand slapping his fat thigh as if he were still at his beating.

He had attacked a plantation worker, too, I heard: a man from our village. When our matai came to complain, Stuart said the worker was insolent and lazy – but I heard John O’Dowd paid him off with a couple of sacks of bananas, which were as good as gold in those days after the hurricane. John must have felt right was on the worker’s side in some way. The matter never came to the police.

The intriguing thing was that Stuart Roper could be good company when it suited him. A short time after the puppy incident, we were both at one of the myriad welcome and farewell parties that punctuate the palagi year in Apia. Someone was always leaving and some new official arriving. Two year stints were the norm. This was, I seem to remember, a welcome. The new UNESCO expert sent to set up a teak furniture-making business. Or was it the United Nations expert checking on the yaws-eradication programme? Anyway, we were both there, and Jeanie. Stewart’s big face shone with goodwill (and maybe beer), his fair hair bristled in a new snappy haircut. His island print shirt suited him – well-cut reasonably muted colours, crisply ironed, which is more than one could say for many of the gaudy rags worn to those dos. When I joined his little group, he hailed me warmly: no hint of a memory there, in his eyes or manner, of the mangled puppy. I remember him telling a joke which had us all laughing. His arm lay across Jeanie’s shoulders; he looked at her often as he talked, as if needing her approval. She smiled back. I don’t think the father was there.

Yes that’s how I remember Jeanie with Stuart. A different person, as if there were two sides to her coin: one when he was about – unremarkable, pleasant, reticent; the other, in his absence – vibrant, curious, talkative and wonderfully sensitive to our island ways. Which is she now, I wonder?

I must see her.

PART TWO

Invasions

Ann

Gore, New Zealand, 1990

Ann Hope looks down the long drive, down past her patient donkeys waiting under the big macrocarpa, down to where a man is standing outside his car, black against the frosted grass. He is looking up towards her house. Does he have binoculars? She’s afraid to move lest he detect her. She breathes slowly, but her heart won’t steady. The man stamps his feet, looks away over the fields as if searching for signs, then back up at the house.

He’s uncertain, thinks Ann. It gives her hope. Step by quiet step she eases away from the window then runs to ring Michael.

‘Can you come over quickly? There’s a man at the bottom of the drive. It’s the second time I’ve seen him. I think he may be stalking me.’

‘The bastard! Shall I see him off then?’

Bluff Michael would deal with him as he would a disobedient dog – a flung arm, a sharp command – but Ann has a better idea.

‘Could you come over the back way? Make it seem as if you live here?’ She tries to laugh but the sound comes out ragged, ‘Then you can be as rude as you like!’

‘Take it easy lass. I’ll be there in five minutes. I’ll bring the twins shall I?’

The twins are Michael’s identical huntaways, Jess and Jack, lean exuberant animals, deep voiced – intimidating if you don’t know them.

‘Yes please.’

Ann makes herself look again. The car is still there, but the man is out of sight. For a moment she panics. Is he here at the door already? But there he is, still below, easing himself out of the car. He slams the door and begins, uncertainly, walking towards the drive. His body rocks from side to side – an old man’s walk. But he wouldn’t be more than fifty-five, would he? Actually, she realises, fifty-nine.

He fumbles with the gate. Ann leaves him to it. Knowing that Michael is on the way has given her the energy she needs. She runs upstairs to the bedroom. In front of the mirror she feels a moment of despair. Then with a cry of exasperation at her own weakness, she pulls her hair back tightly into a bun and with shaky hasty hands ties it with a yellow scarf, leaving the ends to drape. In her daughter’s bedroom she scrabbles in a drawer, finds an old bag of make-up and slashes at her face: bright lipstick, eye shadow, rouge even. Over her usual neat trousers and jersey she throws a loose woollen poncho and the heavy rope of ceramic beads Francesca made years ago at school. The effect is encouragingly stodgy. She tries on dark glasses but they are too unlikely, too obviously a disguise. Then remembers the magnifying glasses she uses for her weaving. Yes.

But there’s nothing she can do about her height.

The dread returns with the knock. A tentative rap. He can’t be sure. He can’t be.

Ann clumps down the stairs, trying to imagine herself as someone else. I am on stage, she thinks, this is Gore Repertory, and I am a country frump answering the door in the opening scene.

The man’s raincoat is unbuttoned; a dirty scarf hangs to his knees. Under it she can see a sports jacket and brown jersey. You would have thought he would come in his best suit. He is bare-headed in the icy air, and, but for faded stubble above his ears, bald. Ann realises that he has come bare-headed so that she will see the scar. The hand is hidden by gloves. He has changed so much, though, in other ways. Perhaps she has also. But then, she thinks, I recognise him.

‘Yes?’ She makes her voice rough. Makes herself look at him. ‘Are you selling religion?’

He stares at her.

‘I saw your car loitering at my drive yesterday.’ She wishes, too late, that she had remembered to say our drive. ‘I have everything I need. Please go away.’

He holds out a photograph. ‘Is this you? It is isn’t it?’ He’s belligerent, but also unsure.

Ann won’t look. ‘Goodbye.’

But he shoves his foot in the door as she tries to close it. Has something she has said or done made him more confident? Ann’s heart is beating so hard she can scarcely stand. This is ridiculous, she thinks, I can manage this. But knows that she can’t.

His face is red. He’s still puffing from the walk up the steep drive. ‘Jeanie?’ he says, part belligerence, part plea. ‘Jeanie, isn’t it?’

The dogs arrive baying, pounding around from the back, one each side of the house in a pincer movement. Clever dogs. At the same time Michael appears behind her in the hall.

‘What’s up here?’ He whistles to the dogs who sit immediately, panting and slavering, eyes on the stranger, only wanting, it seems, that he should make a move to set them off again.

‘Who are you?’ says the man.

‘More to the point,’ says Michael, ‘who are bloody you?’

The man holds out the photograph again. ‘I recognised her in this photograph.’ He nods at Ann.

Michael looks at the photo. Then at Ann. He grins. ‘I heard about that. Arse over tits in the Hokonui.’

‘Michael.’

Michael comes to attention. ‘Doesn’t mean she knows you.’ To Ann: ‘Do you?’

Ann shakes her head, keeps her voice steady and rough. ‘I’ve never set eyes on him.’

The man draws breath sharply.

‘You heard her. Now bugger off.’

‘She’s my wife.’ His cloudy blue eyes remain fixed on her, searching. ‘You see, Jeanie, I never gave up. I knew … I knew you were here somewhere.’ He rushes on before either of the others can interrupt. ‘All these years I knew I would find you. That photo – I saw it in our local rag. A competition, you see for funny images. It was a sign. A special sign to me that we were meant to be together again. I never ever gave up hoping Jeanie.’

‘Lord bless us,’ mutters Michael. ‘A nutter. Look sport, off you go before I call the police.’

The dogs seem to recognise the word. They growl in unison.

‘And stay off our land. You’re not welcome. Got it?’

At a gesture from Michael the dogs rise. They each bark once and look to their master for further instruction. Ann could hug them.

The man shows the palm of his one good hand, a gesture that could be pitiful though the dogs are instantly on alert. He looks from Ann to Michael and back again, frowning. ‘Is he with you now? Does he know about us?’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Michael bellows, pointing at the drive. ‘Out!’

Jess and Jack set up a great, deep-throated baying and bound down the drive then back up to the transfixed man. Step by step they drive him down to the road, barking all the way, tails in the air, having a whale of a time. They are not often allowed to play like this.

Ann’s legs are about to give way. ‘Michael, bless you. Come and have coffee.’ Though she would rather be on her own for a bit.

In the kitchen Michael frowns at her. ‘What’s all this get-up then? You look like a tart.’

Ann has forgotten about the make-up. The glasses and hair. She tries to laugh it off. ‘That idiot thought I looked like someone he knew. I tried to make myself different. Silly really, but he got under my skin. He was snooping around the school a couple of days ago, showing the photograph, asking for my name.’

A month ago she had taken a history class to the Hokonui Moonshine Museum, had slipped on the polished floor, lost her balance and ended up in the life-size display of a group of moonshiners, her arm around a barrel of whisky. The girls had thought it a huge joke. Some visitor must have been tempted and taken a forbidden photograph – she remembered a flash.

‘What a creep.’ Michael spoons sugar and gulps down his coffee. ‘Well that was a bit of fun, Ann. He won’t be back in a hurry.’ He rises, smiling at her, rubbing her back as if she were a spooked horse. ‘Go and wash all that rubbish off. Shall I come over tonight, make sure you’re okay?’

Ann nods, invites him for dinner. The least she can do. Before he leaves, he unties her yellow scarf then ploughs his blunt farmer’s fingers through her hair, freeing it again. He bends to kiss the top of her head. She has not known him so tender.

‘Take care Ann.’ And he’s off, the twins running ahead, down the front paddock which is now striped with green where the sun has got to the frost.

No sign of the car.

But he knows, thinks Ann. Of course he recognised me. The stupid disguise would only make him more sure. The question is – will he give up? The man she once knew would not. He would hound her relentlessly, his pride wounded, but still, in some perverse and twisted way, in need of her. But surely after more than twenty years …?

Ann groans. Yesterday when he stood there, in the same place, just standing, for over an hour, she knew. Wouldn’t admit, even to herself, but she knew. That mad stubborn persistence. Will she never be free of him?

All that weekend Ann is restless. She goes about her normal chores, but it’s as if his visit has left a stain – something putrid – on everything. As she hangs sheets to dry in her sunny back yard she remembers the old times. How she had ever let him into her life? What had attracted her?

He had been lying still and pale in a hospital bed in Wanganui. A badly broken leg and abrasions all down one side of his face and arm. Ann flicks at a sheet, thinking back to all those hospital beds she had made. He’d been target shooting with his mates, from the back of a moving motorbike. ‘Stupid,’ he’d said with a grin, ‘but I hit the target! Then we hit the gravel bend. Curtains.’ Ann had replied as she dressed the wounds – something that made him smile.

‘That’s better,’ she had said at his smile, and he had complained, with another grin, that it wasn’t better at all – that smiling hurt his face. He had been charming to her, flirting with her, but in a gentle, helpless way that touched her deeply. She loved the blue of his eyes and the way they crinkled at the edges when he smiled, privately, for her. And the few sandy freckles across the bridge of his nose. He would joke about how weak he was, how frustrated that he couldn’t make a pass at her. Ann was flattered.

That’s it, she thinks, pegging out her smalls savagely, I was a silly fool, wide open to his blarney. Not many boys were interested in her, back then. She thought perhaps her size put them off; who would want to walk out with a girl who only came up to his armpit? Or perhaps her father was a deterrent. She didn’t want to admit that, but knew it to be so. There had been Tony, a real boyfriend when she was training. He had come home with her one night, to meet her father. Ann had thought it was a lovely evening. Her father was happy that night, the lamb she cooked was delicious, Tony was pleasant and attentive. But next day he’d looked at her strangely.

‘You never said your father was Chinese.’

‘Only part Chinese,’ she’d protested. ‘Why?’

‘You never mentioned your Chinese blood.’ It was an accusation. He sounded hurt, upset.

‘For heaven’s sake, Tony,’ she’d said, angry with him, with his moodiness. ‘Whatever is it? I’m one quarter Chinese. One hundred per cent Pakeha. So what?’

They’d had a row. And then, to her amazement, he’d never wanted to patch it up. They never went out again. After that she was sensitive about bringing boys home. Her father asked after Tony and she’d had to make excuses.

But Stuart never seemed to care. In the long weeks when he was in traction, his great white cast strung up, pulleys and weights dragging the damaged bones and muscles into shape, he would watch her quietly as she came down the ward. She knew he watched her. His smile was always warm; he always joked with her, when other patients might criticise or complain.

Once, when she was washing him, his hand reached up to touch her breast. His eyes were so beseeching, so sweet, that she let it rest there for a moment, fearful of discovery but excited. After that, he often touched her, hidden behind the discreet curtains. Didn’t bother to hide his erection. If another nurse was rostered to wash him, he was disappointed, and let her know it. When his dragon of a mother came to take him home, Stuart had introduced Jeanie as if they were engaged. Jeanie was flattered, pleased. He was older than her, with a good job in a law firm. It was only later, after they were married, that she realised that he was not actually a lawyer.

Ann sighs. Walks back into the house with the empty basket. Get out of my head, Stuart. Don’t you dare invade Ann Hope’s comfortable life. She stamps out into the garden and attacks weeds savagely. Each uprooted plant is part of Stuart, left to wither in the sun. Gradually the rhythm soothes her galloping mind. The freshly turned soil smells sweet and damp. Soon she will sow spring vegetables. Already the broad beans are in need of staking. She forgets the invasion and becomes Ann Hope again.

But sitting over a pile of students’ books that afternoon, memories return to torment her. She rehearses again all the old questions. Why? Why did I give in to him? Was it pressure from her friends? They were all married or engaged. Perhaps she had felt this might be a last opportunity. And she really liked Stuart. He was fun; didn’t complain about his injury; was pleasant to her father. When her father produced a deposit on a house as a wedding gift, she was so touched she cried; Stuart put a gentle arm around her shoulder and thanked her father warmly. It was a lovely moment. Jeanie thought of it as the beginning of a wonderful life with both Stuart and John. Stuart didn’t even want to wait until he was properly back on his feet; he married her on crutches, which her friends found sweet and touching. His shooting club, grinning and cheering, made an archway with their rifles. It was a happy day.

Ann’s pen flicks back and forth in her hand; the essay in front of her remains unmarked. Her eyes are fixed on the ticking clock on the wall but she views old scenes, a different time that has remained blessedly buried for many years.

Could she and Stuart ever have made a go of it? For a few months they did. They often set off to work together on Stuart’s new motorbike, went to the pictures, lazed on the beach in the weekends, made love. Stuart was a good, energetic lover. Inexperienced Jeanie loved it all. Especially the nights.

But then it seemed that the more Stuart recovered from his injury, the more difficult their relationship became. Jeanie invited John to their flat (Stuart didn’t want to buy a house just yet) a couple of times a week. Perhaps her father was lonely. He descended into one of his ‘quiet’ periods, speaking little, gazing at the carpet for minutes on end before answering a simple question. Jeanie was used to these times; would jolly him along, or ignore him. But Stuart became really irritated.

‘Why doesn’t he answer? I asked a civil question.’ Stuart would not accept that John was depressive. ‘He’s just doing it to annoy me. He doesn’t like me. Don’t invite him while he’s like this, Jeanie.’

But of course Jeanie had to. These were the very times when she was needed. Sometimes Stuart would stay at work if her father was invited. Or go to the pub.

Then the violence started. Jeanie was so shocked the first time he hit her, that she hit him straight back, as hard as she could, then ran out of the flat and over to her father’s place. Stuart had come home drunk, had criticised the meal, the state of the flat, her father; even Jeanie’s new hairdo. Nothing was right. When she answered back, he hit her.

Next day, he came into the ward and handed her a big bunch of flowers, gave her a lopsided smile, kissed her gently and left without another word. Of course she went back that night and cooked a special meal with candles and a bottle of wine. The love they made that night was wonderful.

Perhaps he’d been violent before, with other people? Jeanie never really found out. His mother never spoke about him as a boy; in fact she didn’t really seem to like him much.

‘Bless you, dear,’ she’d said at the wedding. ‘I won’t pretend it’s not a relief. The two of us in one house …’

A strange thing to say at a wedding.

Ann marks an essay; and then another. She wills the memories to retreat, but they have a stubborn life of their own. They have been waiting for a crack to appear and now they crowd into the opening. Remember me? Remember me! Ann gives up on the marking and heads outside again, with a bucket of feed for the donkeys. The old scenes follow her down the paddock, cruelly persistent. The fight at the law office.

‘I don’t need to remember all this,’ she says out loud. The donkeys nod gravely.

The fight at the law office came the day after Stuart had knocked Jeanie to the floor, bruising her badly. While he cried and pleaded drunkenly, Jeanie had packed a bag and walked over to her father’s place. By now she knew what to expect. Sincere apologies next morning or afternoon; pleas for her to return; promises that it would never happen again; chocolates or flowers or both. She was sick of it all, angry with him, vowing that this time she wouldn’t go back; wouldn’t give in. By next day she was already wondering if it might all pass; that they were just getting used to each other. A baby would settle them. Jeannie had talked with Aunt Mary, John’s sister, who had suggested just that.

‘Wait for your first baby, dear. You’ll find that makes a difference to most men. They think they’re so tough, and then a son comes along and they turn overnight into little softies.’

Aunt Mary had no children of her own, but was fond of pronouncements, which Jeanie, lacking a mother to tell her otherwise, usually accepted as wise.

But this time it was worse – far, far worse. Jeanie came back from night shift to find Stuart at her father’s place, sitting in the living room in tears. Real tears rolling down.

‘I’ve made a mess of things, lost my job, lost my wife, what am I going to do?’

‘What is it?’ Jeanie had asked, too tired and sore to care, really.

‘He criticised my work. Told me the mistakes were stupid; that I was sloppy.’ Stuart had looked up at her, needy, stricken. ‘It simply wasn’t true, Jeanie. The fellow was covering up for his own faults. It wasn’t me at all. After last night I was – upset. You shouldn’t have walked out, Jeanie. I was upset. Then he pushed me and I hit him back. Anyone would. Anyone.’

On and on he whined, while Jeanie dragged herself into the kitchen and made breakfast for them all. He followed her, stood in the doorway justifying himself desperately as if she was the accuser.

‘Okay, I broke his jaw, but he hit first. They didn’t need to fire me. Two hours they gave me to pack up and go. Is that right? Is that decent behaviour Jeanie? Two hours! I’m going to sue them. They can’t do that to me.’

And so on. John O’Dowd sat in the living room, silent, staring at the carpet. Jeanie, still bruised, dead tired, left the breakfast dishes in the sink, put the newspaper in her father’s unresponsive lap, and went to bed.

A couple of days later she learnt that her father had agreed that the deposit money for the house could be used to pay for a lawyer to defend Stuart. John O’Dowd would have been more careful if he had been in a fit state himself, but Stuart had possibly bullied him. Jeanie was too tired to take much notice. Her salary was not enough to keep them both; they moved in with her father. Jeanie was looking after the house, her father, a new, subdued Stuart, and working full time.

Ann scratches the rough hair at the base of a donkey’s ears. I should have divorced him then. Yes, that would have been the moment. Asked him to leave her father’s house. But divorce was not common in 1964, and, looking back, she has to admit that she was afraid of him; of what he might do to her or her father. There were good times still, when Stuart was full of energy, sure he would win the case, loving towards her.

‘When I’ve won,’ he would say, his blue eyes excited, his arms around her in their marriage bed which occupied nearly all the floor space in John’s spare room, ‘we’ll move away somewhere, start a new life in a new town. You need to get away from your father, Jeanie. He relies on you too much.’

Jeanie would press herself into him, happy for this lull, but knew she could never leave her father. Looking after him was a habit – a loving duty – more important to her than her marriage.

Was that the root of the trouble? Stuart was insanely jealous. Perhaps without John, the marriage might have worked? But no; he was jealous of any relationship she had with anyone. And violent. At the hearing, it became obvious that Stuart had been the aggressor. The law partner had several very credible witnesses. Stuart was either lying or delusional – Jeanie thought the latter. He became flustered under questioning and lost his temper with everyone. Jeanie was deeply embarrassed. He lost the case and all their money.

John’s recovery from depression, and the summons from Gertrude Schroder, seemed to open a door into new possibilities; a way out of a mess; another chance for the marriage and a more positive life for John O’Dowd.

An impatient nudge from a soft grey nose brings her back to the task at hand. As she shakes oats into the donkeys’ trough, Ann finds herself desperately willing Stuart dead. She imagines a car crash at a distant icy bend, a random knifing on a dark night, cancer. Even poison. Surely he must have enemies up north? If Auckland is where he still lives. Ann used to keep track, but has not bothered for years. She had foolishly imagined the past buried, and accepted her present life as inviolate.

The fear is still there, twenty years later. An irrational, visceral fear. His face at the door this morning, his figure standing below on the road, made her legs tremble. She could see them shake. How could that sad stranger manage to panic her? Why could Ann Hope, successful teacher and mother, not rise above that fear? This is something different from the rational and very real fear for her daughter. Her body still remembers the beatings; her body flinches to see him again.

She stands with one hand on the rough dusty coat of a munching donkey. But even the gentle beasts and the perfection of the bright morning can’t still her fear.

Does he know about Francesca?

Ann reads her daughter’s letter carefully; lays it on the polished wood of the table and walks out into the black night. Above, the sky is brilliant with stars, the soft luminescence of the Milky Way drifting diagonally from horizon to horizon. Sweet wood smoke from her chimney softens the sharp air. She looks over to the next rise, where the lights of Michael’s house glow behind drawn curtains. But Michael will be no help this time.

Ann shivers. The cold air has cleared her tired head, but the problem remains to be solved. She goes back inside and reads Francesa’s letter again. 

I have a patron!! Well sort of. This amazing big Pacific Island woman has bought my painting of Florence (you know, the one in the exhibition – $500!!) and now is interested in helping me market my fabric designs. She knows someone in Wellington who runs a shop for Island stuff and thinks my prints could sell well! I haven’t told my tutor because we’re not allowed to be commercial yet, so don’t mention it to anyone.

Anyway this woman is called Elena Levamanaia and she is someone important in the Department of Health, I think. She’s huge.

Now Mum, I know you’ve never been that keen on Islanders but Elena would change your mind. She’s lovely. I’ve met her twice. Her laugh would knock you over at twenty paces! What’s more she seems to have plenty of money and has promised to help me launch a fabric business once I’ve finished this year! A sort of sleeping partner. Isn’t that terrific? Don’t, please, tell me that I’m being naïve. Maybe it’ll all come to nothing but let me dream! I’m dying to tell Anton, but he’d only blab it all over the school and then I’d get stomped on.

I’m studying Pacific Island design seriously now, especially Samoan (Elena comes from there) and want to see if I can incorporate some of their images with my own ideas. My tutors seem reasonably pleased with what I’m producing.

Our final exhibition will be in the week October 20-27. Can you come over then? It’ll still be term time for you, but there’s the weekend. Elena might come too, she says, and then you could meet her. I know you would like her. She just your sort (though not in any way your shape!!).

Give the donkeys a kiss from me. And heaps for you.

I miss you!

Love, Fran 

It beggars belief. After more than twenty peaceful, unremarkable years, two people close to her old life have surfaced within a month of each other. Ann feels the good, sheer walls enclosing the life of Ann Hope crazing like the glass on a shattered windscreen. Any moment, she feels, they will fall in pieces, exposing her and Francesca to a past for which neither she nor her daughter is prepared.

Have I been a fool, she wonders? Not for the first time; but she can’t imagine that she would have acted otherwise. She pours herself a large glass of wine and sits by the fire drinking it. To hell with a clear head for classes in the morning. The tapestry she has planned to work on glows untouched on its frame. Memories and images storm the crumbling ramparts and pour over into the present – an uncontested army, rioting and looting as they advance.

Stuart has sent three letters which she has burnt unseen, but at least he hasn’t returned. Elena will arrive, though, and will not be turned away. Not Elena.

‘Damn you Elena!’ she says out loud. ’Damn, damn, damn you!’

‘Damn’ is the word she chooses as a greeting when Elena does indeed arrive, driving up unannounced, uninvited one Saturday afternoon. No hesitating at the gate for Elena. Ann, rooting in the vegetable garden for a few last carrots and parsnips, sees a big red four-wheel drive pull up, watches as Elena clambers out, surprisingly agile for one so large, unhooks the gate and stares up into the setting sun. She sees Ann and helloos, punching the air and dancing her delight. Ann has scarcely time to wash her hands before Elena is at the door, a grin as wide as the ocean, arms spread wide.

‘Damn you, Elena,’ says Ann, but doesn’t mean it; can’t keep up the charade. She allows herself to be engulfed, lifted off her feet, kissed resoundingly on each cheek.

Elena lowers her to the ground, takes a string of cowrie shells from her neck and places it around Ann’s, where it hangs almost to her knees. She sways her way, half dancing, back to the car and brings out a large basket.

‘Feast!’ she calls. ‘Remember, my friend, always bring a picnic!’ Then stops suddenly, depositing the basket in the driveway. Tears are streaming down her wide brown face. ‘Jeanie, Jeanie, where were you? All these years!’

Ann is crying too. ‘I’m Ann these days; you must call me Ann, Elena.’

‘Well.’ Elena is suddenly serious. ‘Much talking to be made. But first, the feast: ‘ai muamua ona tautala ai lea. All that driving! I could eat a whole pig. Ani? May I call you Ani? You need to live so far away?’

‘Yes,’ says Ann. ‘Yes I do.’ She pulls Elena inside. It would not be helpful if Michael were to catch sight and come to join the party. Not yet. She spreads a white cloth on the dining room table, stokes up the fire and helps Elena unpack the basket. There are ham sandwiches, a chicken, a good piece of cold roast pork, marinated mussels, tomatoes and cucumbers chopped and ready to eat, a hand of bananas, a cream sponge, a whole pineapple and – ‘since we are in a palagi country’ – a bottle of champagne rolled up tightly between a couple of thawing ice packs in layers of newspaper.

‘If you have spinach in the garden we could make palusami,’ says Elena hopefully, waving a tin of coconut cream. But she is too hungry to pursue this diversion.

Ann pours the bubbles; Elena washes her hands carefully at the kitchen sink, breaks open the chicken, and sits down. Ann can not keep a straight face as she and Elena eat. Every time their eyes meet they smile. The warmth, the love between them won’t be denied. Ann realises how much she has missed an intimate friendship. Yet she remains wary of what is to come; impatient to get it over with. She can hardly detect a change from the Elena of twenty years ago. Larger, certainly – perhaps less exuberant – but seemingly ageless. Elena is in no hurry. As she eats, she remarks on the tapestries, the woven rugs, Francesca’s paintings, from time to time wiping away, with a smile, a trickling tear. She eats with delicacy but thoroughly. Ann waits. Turns down the offer of cake. She is not used to such large meals.

‘Once you were not so careful,’ says Elena.

Ann frowns. ‘What do you mean?

‘You would risk more.’ Elena bites into a large slice with relish, finishes the whole piece before she speaks again.

‘O Ani o lau uo, I have found you at last, my friend.’ She lays her large warm hand over Ann’s small dry one.

‘Elena,’ says Ann with more force than she intends, ‘you have stalked me like ….’ She will not say his name. ‘You have wormed your way into my daughter’s life, bribing her in order to get close to me.’

Elena holds up her hands in dismay. ‘Auoi tafefe! Jeanie … Ani, why do you attack? Your daughter’s work is lovely. Lovely.’ She raises her eyebrows in that peculiarly Samoan expression. ‘Why, why did you run away?’

‘At the museum?’

‘All the time! All these years! You had no need to hide.’

‘I did.’

‘But from me? Your friend?’

‘From everyone. Elena, it’s complicated.’

Elena stands. Picks up dishes. ‘Well, we will clear away and you can talk as we work. Complications are eased, I find, if the hands are active.’

Ann smiles. Wants desperately to give in; to unburden herself to this old friend. Elena is so persuasive, so seductive. She wills herself to guard her tongue.

They store the surplus food then stand at the sink together, looking down towards the road. Elena’s bulk fills Ann’s small kitchen, her hands engulf the wet plates. But she dries with care and stacks them neatly.

Elena comes to the point now. No more skirmishing. ‘Your daughter is Samoan.’

This is not a question, Ann notes. ‘You can’t know that.’

‘Yes Ani, I can most definitely. Sooner or later someone else will make the same discovery.’

‘You saw the Florence painting and made a guess.’ Ann looks at Elena sheepishly.

Elena lets out a guffaw. ‘That painting of Florence! Wonderful! Like a clue, especially to me. Don’t deny – you still thought of me when you told her that big fib.’

‘Yes, yes, I suppose I did.’ Ann frowns, remembering answering little Francesca’s questions, her insistence on knowing. Since the trip to Italy, her daughter seems to have lost interest in her heritage, to Ann’s relief. ‘What makes you think she might be Samoan?’

Elena leans forward and the bench creaks. ‘To me it is obvious. The physiognomy. Her skin colour of course could be Mediterranean, Maori, Arab even. The nose – definitely palagi. But the shape of eyes and cheekbone, the bone structure – the clues are there for a knowledgeable student of Pacific peoples. Has no one suggested it to her before?’

Ann feels the panic rising again. She tries to keep her voice firm. ‘No, Elena, and no one should. She is happy and settled. Please, please do not try to change things.

‘But Ani, how could you do such a thing? Deny her heritage? Her culture?’

Ann is irritated at this accusation. At every step throughout Francesca’s life, Ann has been careful, watched over her daughter, answered questions – if not with the exact truth, then with a good answer. Francesca is well adjusted and happy; Ann is sure of that and will defend that security with ferocity. ‘Elena,’ she says, ‘my daughter’s culture is the one she has been brought up with. Francesca is comfortable in it. I have good reason to hide from her the Samoan side.’

Elena raises one finger, cocking an eye. Ann realises with a start what she has admitted and turns on Elena in a fury, all her care forgotten. ‘Don’t you dare barge in and ruin our lives! You must not interfere in what you don’t know. You must leave it alone, Elena.’

Elena waves a tea towel at Ann as if to flap away a bad smell. ‘Eh! Eh! You sound just like Hamish!’

Ann steadies herself against the bench. She can feel the colour draining from her face. ‘Hamish Lander? He’s still alive?’

Elena’s attention suddenly sharpens. She watches Ann closely. ‘Hamish Lander, yes. When I told him I’d seen you at the museum he was most rude. Accused me of – well – you would say meddling.’

Ann catches her breath. ‘I would say that yes. Most definitely.’

Elena leads Ann through her own house until she finds suitable furniture for conversation. She seats Ann with care, hands her a glass of water; watches as Ann drinks. When she is seated herself, her voluminous dress draped to her satisfaction, she begins.

This is why I couldn’t confide in her, thinks Ann. She takes over. She would have steered me in a different direction. A wrong one.

‘Ani,’ Elena says gently, ‘I understand that you must have good reason to keep the Samoan blood secret. I understand that. You are a careful, strong woman. But there must be a way. After all these years. Surely she should know.’

‘She should not,’ says Ann. ‘No Elena she should not.’

‘An illegitimate Italian child is less shameful than an illegitimate Samoan one?’

‘Oh Elena.’ Ann is suddenly tired, exhausted by the battle within. ‘I have made a promise. I have sworn. Please let the matter lie. Please.’

Elena seems not to have noticed the plea. ‘A promise to who? The father?’

‘To myself – on behalf of my daughter.’

Elena shifts a little, regards Ann with her head tilted to one side, considering, no doubt, the next line of attack. Ann waits. She remembers the examination, years ago, for her French orals – the patient tutors behind their desks, trying not to appear terrifying; and failing.

‘Ani,’ says Elena at last, ‘you must know what I am thinking. That Teo is the father. Her age would fit.’

Ann says nothing. She looks away, out to the hills in the distance. She thinks of her beloved dead father and prays to his soul for strength.

‘You have promised to keep the child secret, to save his pule.’ Elena makes a face. ‘That wife of his – Ma’atoe – is a jealous and proud woman. Her children are not allowed to visit me in New Zealand for fear I contaminate them with my modern ideas! Can you imagine! But then she is high-born.’

Ann stares into the fire. She dares not speak.

Elena smiles and leans forward ominously. ‘My dear Ani, my naughty brother is a better man these days. A little pompous, but not as wayward as in those years we were together. A matai, yes, and a Member of Parliament. He has a certain standing and may enter the Cabinet soon. His reputation is secure enough. An illegitimate palagi child might be excused – even chuckled over as a conquest in past days.’ She slaps her thigh and chuckles herself. ‘Ma‘atoe need not know.’

‘Elena my old friend,’ Ann rises and holds out her hand. The worst is perhaps over. ‘I have made a promise and will keep it. At the time I was very angry with – the father – and never wanted to see him again.’ (This, at least, is the truth.) ‘Francesca will never have knowledge of her birth father. Surely it’s not so important. She is happy and secure with a good mother and many friends. If you want to keep in touch with Francesca, it must be as one of those friends. Or as patron.’

Elena gives a little sigh. ‘Not as aunt?’

‘No. Not as aunt. And you must not mention a word of any Samoan blood. Or of our time in Samoa.’

Elena sighs again. ‘So hard.’

She has given in too easily, thinks Ann. I don’t trust her for a minute. ‘Listen Elena,’ she says, ‘I have told Francesca what you call “a big fib” for good reason. What will she think of me if you tell her something different now? Will she ever trust me again?’

Elena says nothing, but her eyes accuse. She spreads her hands, palms up, as if the answer is obvious, then slaps them down on her thighs.

‘Well, then. So, for the time being we will differ on the matter of Francesca.’ She smiles easily and steers the conversation to other matters. Her own life; Ann’s.

‘That story of Florence,’ she says, tracing a finger over the tapestry cushion at her side, ‘I told not one person but you.’ I made a big joke of it, I think, when we sat over our lunch at the clinic – do you remember that day? How we laughed?’

Ann remembers the ease of their friendship back in the islands, the many hilarities. Elena was away, back in New Zealand, during the darkest time. Her memories seem all to be clear and sunlit; or is she trying to seduce Ann?

‘Yes I remember,’ she says, smiling. ‘Your stories always made me laugh.’

Elena sighs. ‘Shall I tell you the truth? It was not a funny time at all. I changed it to make you laugh. I told you a big fib because I wanted to tell, but was embarrassed about the truth. Perhaps you have been the same with Francesca.’

Before Ann can interrupt, to argue again her own scruples, Elena tells the real story. She speaks in a different voice now – not the usual colourful flow. The words are hesitant, troubled.

‘For me it wasn’t really the fun-filled trip of a lifetime – the carefree OE that we all loved to boast about. My mother didn’t even know about it. I lied to her.’ Elena looks quickly up at Ann and back again at the pattern on the cushion. ‘It was the year before my degree course in Dunedin started. I’d passed my prelim exams in Wellington with flying colours. Two other students – friends in a casual sort of way – decided to have a year off before all the hard work and asked me to come too. I had saved enough of the scholarship money to go and wanted desperately to see Europe, so we went. My mother thought I was hard at work on an isolated farm earning enough to continue my studies. In a way the guilt of that lie spoiled things for me – I was always worrying that she might find out. One of the others was a boy, which would be considered highly improper in Samoa. But I rather fancied him and liked her, so I went.’

‘Was this an affair?’ says Ann, interested despite her worries. ‘You never mentioned an affair!’

‘Not really an affair. He was clever and good fun. We held hands once or twice. I was always a prude, even in Samoa. Teo told me I was known as the ice queen, for my standoffish ways!’ Elena smiles, perhaps sadly. ‘I was interested in other things. Boys usually seemed rather silly to me.’

‘But Florence?’ Ann prompts. ‘Did it really happen?’

‘Oh yes. It happened,’ Elena clears her throat angrily, ‘but not in the boisterous, hilarious way I told it to you – and no doubt you told to Francesca. I was homesick; the other two had gone off somewhere for a couple of days together. They had become a sort of couple, which made me even more miserable. I knew no one in the camping ground and was freezing, huddled in my sleeping bag in our little tent. I could hear laughter from the tent next door.

‘Then a young English boy poked his head through the flap and said his Italian friend knew of a good party – in an old mill close by. He said they’d noticed I was alone and asked if I’d like to join them. I shook my head.’ Tears stand in Elena’s eyes as she looks up. ‘Embarrassed at my own shyness, terrified of what my mother would think, ashamed of being such a wimp. Get the picture?’

‘Elena, you don’t have to tell me,’ says Ann. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

‘I want to tell you, Ani. Do you mind?’

Ann moves over to sit at Elena’s feet. This is not at all how she had pictured the evening, but she’s glad of the diversion, glad to be, in some way, needed.

Elena takes a deep breath. ‘He was very persuasive but not violent. I buried my head in the sleeping bag and he went away. I felt dreadful. Lay there listening to their laughter, which I now imagined was aimed at me. Finally they came back.’

‘They?’

‘All three boys – two English and one handsome Italian – that part was real – with a bottle of Chianti. They pushed in and sat down beside me, rather drunk, saying they were coming to cheer me up. “Have a drink,” they said, “then you might feel like coming to the party.” Again, I was too shy to send them away.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ says Ann, trying to make light of the story. ‘The feisty Elena Levamanaia?’

Elena strokes Ann’s head where it rests now on her knee. ‘I was out of my element, Ani, and alone. Who can behave as they’d wish in those times? I sat up in bed, accepted a drink, pretended to be friendly; tried to be the party girl they were looking for. Of course it got worse. I became light-headed very quickly. The Italian started to stroke my arm, which rather excited me at first, but then one of the other boys joined in on the other side, and I became frightened.’

‘Why didn’t you call out? There must have been people within earshot.’

‘Oh yes there were, there were. Why didn’t I call out? Shame again? I was in my nightdress and didn’t want anyone to see me. The boys were laughing. They thought it all a great joke. “Don’t be afraid,” one of them said. “We won’t hurt you – it’s just a bit of fun. Come on sweetie, enjoy yourself.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I hated every minute of their pawing. In the end I fought them with all my strength, silently but with hate in my heart. That excited them even more. One of them …’ Elena stopped speaking.

Ann turns up to look at her friend. ‘Oh Elena, did they rape you?’

‘No. Not completely. I was too strong for them. But one of them couldn’t hold back his excitement and made a mess on my sleeping bag. He told me I was a frigid bitch and to go back to whatever backwoods I’d crawled out of. Then they all went. Off, noisy and laughing, to their party at the mill.’

Elena sighs. Wipes at the tears with the back of her hand. ‘I was never there at that party. That’s the true version. Not a laugh a minute. I have felt shame ever since. Perhaps what he said was right – perhaps I am frigid.’

Ann laughs. ‘You are the warmest, most lively person I’ve ever met.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Ann nods. The silence between them is comfortable. I have missed this good friend, she thinks, more than I knew.

The room has grown colder. Ann goes to bank up the fire, but Elena halts her. She rises from her chair, graceful despite her bulk. ‘Time I should go, Ani my dear friend. Thank you for listening. I must drive back to Invercargill tonight, and then Wellington early in the morning.’ She cups Ann’s face in her hand, rubbing gently. ‘You are tired. And we must both work tomorrow.’

‘I knew you would come,’ Ann says quietly at the door. ‘But I don’t really understand why. Why did you come, Elena? Why take so much trouble? All this is in the past.’

‘To me not.’ Elena’s voice comes smiling from the darkened drive. ‘I do not share your palagi sense of time. Past and present live together. Remember that time at the archaeological site? On that great mound?’

Ann waits, trying to grasp the connection, but no further comment is offered. She sees Elena’s moonlit hand raised beside the car. Then the door slams and she drives away. She watches as Elena climbs out to manage the gate, drives through and stops to latch it again. She can’t see if there is a final wave.

As she tidies away coffee cups, turns out lights, Ann admits to herself the pleasure of Elena’s visit. The good times have been locked away securely with the bad, she thinks. I had forgotten entirely that there were good times. She wonders if Elena has other bad times to remember. Not Ann’s, but others of her own. The thought that they will meet again is a pleasure – a dangerous anticipation. No meeting has been planned but they both know it will happen. What an aching pleasure it would be to sit with Elena again and tell the truth, as Elena has just done. The whole story. In the tapestry of these twenty good years – ones to be proud of – is woven a single twisted thread of worry and guilt. Has she done the right thing? Should Francesca have always known the truth?

Elena is the person she could tell. But what might she break in the process?

PART THREE

Fa‘asamoa

Elena

Well, I will need to tread lightly as they say. Not so easy for a big woman! Especially one of my nature. Why did I take the trouble, she asked? A good question. I asked myself the same on that long drive in the dark back to my cold hotel bed. Part, of course, was the allure of that young woman who may be the niece I have longed to nurture. But part also is tied up with Jeanie herself. The friends I have are mostly casual. Jeanie is different. I would not tell that story of the dreadful time in Florence to anyone else. Not to Teo. Not to my mother – especially not my mother! I know I’m looked upon as strange – an unmarried Samoan woman! But the idea of married life – or life with a man, I suppose I should say – simply doesn’t interest me. Nothing particularly strange about that from my point of view. My work is satisfying. But the loss of Jeanie has left a hole in the weave of my life that no one else has filled. I can’t really explain it. Nor do I feel the need to.

I‘d like to talk to her about my present dilemma. Should I go back to Samoa, as I am called to do? The job offered is good, very good, and I would be in a position to make a difference. Also, a senior matai title is on the table – on the mat, I should say! I have never agreed to accept a title unless I were living in the islands and could fulfil my duties properly. I have never admired those who accept titles while still living overseas. They send money, yes, but that is not the purpose of a title. A matai should be a leader, not a source of income.

Somehow, seeing Jeannie that day in the museum brought back the feeling we had, Teo and I, returning to the islands. We were full of hope, and purpose then, confident of changing things for the better. We were the new, qualified generation, able, under the new constitution, to make a difference in our own country.

And in those first few years I did, I think. The campaign to stamp out the dreaded filariasis disease; the food distribution after the hurricane. But then I saw Teo give in to the old conservative pressures, and I felt myself doing the same. I told myself I could be more use serving our people back in New Zealand, but basically I suppose I was running away before fa‘asamoa got to me too. The old customs are so strong! I see no change, these days, or none for the better. Children still come last in the pecking order, those with new ideas are suspect, conservative elders still hold sway, the pastors are still overfed and greedy. Violence underlies much of fa‘asamoa. My views are unbalanced perhaps; but in my line of business I need to put a little extra weight in the scales.

I think of those cases of donated milk powder, flour and tins of fish and meat, standing idle in the sheds after the hurricane, while the men tried to agree on a good method of distribution. Months, they languished there while the arguments continued. Should each matai be given an amount according to the number of families in his ‘aiga? Or should each village be given a share to distribute? Perhaps the churches – the pastors – should distribute? (I was definitely against that.) In the end the Women’s Committees demanded, and won, the right to distribute. Those powerful women decreed that every man, woman and child should get exactly the same, and that distribution would be through the Women’s Committees themselves! They were rigid and scrupulous in the task. A triumph, if somewhat ridiculous when it came to the palagi population. That’s where Jeanie and I came into our own. We followed the distribution teams when they went to palagi homes. Two minutes after the supplies had been handed over, we knocked on the door, carrying large baskets.

‘You don’t really need this food,’ Jeanie or I would point out. ‘The hospital will use your contribution in feeding needy children.’ And we’d stand there, smiling, with our baskets. Mostly the food was given willingly. Would the pastors have given their share to the children? No one dared ask them.

So I rave on. My thoughts – prejudices perhaps? – are a shield against this call to return. Am I stronger now, to resist the old ways? To stand up for the rights of the children who need the protein which their elders consume in such large quantities? To be an advocate for those who arrive at the hospital beaten up because they questioned a corrupt, but accepted, practice? Perhaps. Or perhaps I will shrug into the comfort of being an elder myself, and will forget all my ideals. That is my fear. I would like to spend the next ten years of my life back in the islands, so that when the millennium arrives I can say: There, I made my mark and my country is the better for it.

Jeanie would not be seduced I think. Jeanie would always question. She is sharper than me. But more vulnerable.

Whatever made her take such a stand? To disappear and change her name? (Hope: what an interesting choice!) Surely being angry with Teo would not be enough?

Jeanie is misguided or over-cautious – or both – to keep Francesca from the truth. But we will see about all that. In time, surely, I will take my niece to Falelua and tell her the history of her blood.

Our family comes from the village of Falelua in the Tuamasaga District, I will tell her. We are of the Malietoa ‘aiga, which is high-born. You can be proud of your Samoan blood. Our line is not the highest of the Malietoa, but respectable enough.

One day I hope to tell Francesca the stories of her bloodline. Even thinking of telling it – of describing our nu‘u on the coast, east of Apia, makes me smile. The beautiful simple fale set among tall coconut and breadfruit trees – our blessed food-givers; the graves of our ancestors, freshly painted white every year, standing comfortingly close behind our fale, the white coral sand raked smooth and clean around them; the two great churches towering over the village – Catholic and LMS – ridiculously ostentatious, she will say (and I might secretly agree) but a matter of great pride to our nu‘u. Their spires and towers are among the highest in the whole district. I will point upward, inland, to where our village land stretches up to the crest of the green and misty mountains in the distance. Wild jungle, most of it, but nearer to the village our families – our ‘aiga – grow banana and taro, coconuts, mangos, sugarcane, pineapple, pawpaw for the pigs and have a plantation of cacao. See where my mother has a few coffee bushes near the fale, and a patch of beans; and of course flowers for behind our ears, and for lei, and to scent the air. The food gardens in the bush are neatly tended by the men and women of our family, (your family, Francesca) under the orders of our matai. In normal times no one goes hungry. All this I will tell Francesca, my niece, one day.

I love to go back to Falelua and one day I will take you, Francesca. A promise. You will smell the creamy frangipani blossoms which sprout so surprisingly from the bare stubby fingers of the tree. We will tuck a red hibiscus flower behind your ear and roast a pig to welcome you. You will learn to play kilikiti and to dance with those thin arms of yours. We will lie at night on the warm mats in our large fale, side by side under a mosquito net, listening to the surf on the reef which, together with the high tinnitus of the cicadas, is a background to all other comfortable rustling grunting animal sounds of the night. Shall I talk to you in our language until the words begin to take root? There are such stories to tell!

Will my soul mate Jeanie be with us? Maybe, maybe. Let me at least dream.

That terrible day when Jeanie’s father wandered away.

I never knew him well, John O’Dowd. But Jeanie adored him and had been worried about him for some time. He was depressed, she said, not eating properly. Why, I asked, would he be depressed when he had just discovered family – and property – and a new life in our lovely islands? But Jeanie would just shake her head and get on with the bandaging. When it came to her father, Jeanie was reticent. Quite secretive, really. I wondered if it was because of the land dispute between our families. But that never seemed to bother her at other times. Tiresa railed at me for keeping up the friendship, but Teo and I just laughed off the old folk and enjoyed spending time with Jeanie. We were young, then. At the clinic, we’d talk and laugh about anything and everything under the sun as we bandaged those poor swollen limbs, our arms white to the elbows with the warm sticky mixture of plaster and latex, our backs aching with the effort of holding those huge legs as we wound the bandages tightly, tightly, constricting the sagging flesh. The old folk loved her as much as I did; she always had a smile or a joke for them, in her funny mixture of English and Samoan. They would urge us to bind more strongly; would cry out in pleasure as the measurements showed they had lost inches of flesh, would walk out of the clinic proudly, able to lift the leg or the arm a little more freely each week. In that needy time, after the hurricane, the clinic was like a little oasis of hope. That word again.

I had been sent back to Samoa a year earlier, soon after I qualified, to help manage the filariasis campaign. I stayed for the first months – dosing every man, woman and child in Samoa with the filariasis vaccine. The idea was to eradicate the disease entirely from both islands. A mammoth task. My own mother, Tiresa, had a terrible swollen leg, which she hid under her puletasi, and my aunt was worse – one huge arm as well as the leg. Elephantiasis, they used to call it, which is an appropriate, if demeaning name. The swollen limb, heavy with soggy, spongy tissue, resembles the grey, wrinkled leg of an elephant. It can attack a man’s genitals. I remember an old man in our village who had to support his gigantic scrotum in a sort of wheelbarrow if he wanted to walk at all. It was said in those days, that by the time you had been bitten by ten mosquitoes, you would have the nasty little worms in your blood. Not many palagi ever got to the huge-limb stage – that took years. But I treated an old European nun and there was an English priest who always said he was too busy to come in for bandaging. I believe he couldn’t face being handled by a Samoan lady doctor.

I was proud to help with the work, even in the difficult early times. Will I ever forget the day of the first dose! From morning to night the radio blared out ‘Inu au fualaau’, then a moment later, ‘Manatua ia inu au fualaau!’ – the message to take your pills. The Women’s Committees were out in force, handing out the pills, standing over everyone, even matai, to ensure the doses were taken. The heavier you weighed, the more pills were to be swallowed. Our patele had to down thirty-four while my mother watched sternly. In fa‘asamoa that is not an easy thing to do, even if you are a high-born woman and head of the district Women’s Committee. That was something to be proud of: we had persuaded the World Health Organization to insist on the Women’s Committees. The matai would have let themselves off, given half a chance!

But worse was next day, when almost all of Samoa fell ill. Those pills had dreadful side effects for those who were badly infected. Stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fever, lassitude. Activity of any sort came to a standstill. Schools and offices closed; no one worked on the plantations. Everyone lay on their mats and moaned. A few older people remembered the great flu epidemic when so many died. Fear spread like a cloud of evil mosquitoes. I was shouted at for bringing such a disaster upon the islands. Oh dear Lord, it was a nightmare. How could we ever persuade the population to take the second dose? And the third? And so on.

But we did, more or less, and the eradication was declared a cautious success. Almost the entire population was clear of the tiny worm, praise the good Lord and the WHO. Those little devil mosquitoes no longer had infected blood to sip and spread. By the time Jeanie arrived, I was back in the islands again, helping with the aftermath – setting up the clinics, calling for volunteer bandagers, constricting the sagging skin, excising extra flesh. Bringing hope.

I could never persuade Tiresa to come in for bandaging. She had taken her pills, but now her huge leg needed to be constricted with bandages.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ I would rail at her, ‘be an example! Look at the way you bullied the patele into taking his pills. After that, the bandaging is nothing!’

But she never would. Was it Jeanie’s presence? Or perhaps mine? Was she ashamed for me to see how huge and deformed her leg was?

So we planned to trap her. I enlisted the help of a couple of her friends who were already into the bandaging regime. ‘Come into town, Tiresa!’ they cried. ‘There’s a new shipment of hats in Hedstroms. So smart, you won’t believe!’

My mother had a weakness for hats. She was famous for her elaborate concoctions, which started off as a smart, shop-bought hat and ended up piled high with beautiful homemade additions.

So the three of them came to town and walked down the street arm in arm, Tiresa in the middle. Hedstroms was just past the clinic on Beach Road. As they passed the clinic, the two outer ladies, chatting and laughing, steered the unsuspecting Tiresa sideways, through the door and had her sitting between them on the bench before she realised what was up. Jeanie and I were ready to pounce with the sticky mess of bandages.

‘Hats after bandaging!’ the women laughed, digging Tiresa in the ribs. ‘What a clever daughter you have to make us into slim girls again!’

Tiresa had the good grace to see the joke and allow us to work on her. The other two always called for Jeanie to do them, because they thought I was too rough, so then Tiresa had to stand up for me and we ended up in a mad bandaging race, with comparisons of legs and much hilarity. I had a big cake ready as a reward for my mother.

‘Oho!’ shouted the two friends. ‘We’re always coming with you, Tiresa! Such treats, we never get.’

Later, all three came back beaming under their new hats, amid admiring cries from the women waiting for their bandaging. No trouble with Tiresa after that. And she accepted Jeanie too. She was a demanding woman, sometimes, my mother, but fair too. She approved of what Jeanie was doing; the way she joined in. Some of the palagi women never set foot outside their own circles.

Those clinic days were such good fun! Once, Jeanie and I were sitting in the tiny back room of the clinic with our cups of tea and slices of baked breadfruit, tired and happy together. She was talking about children – about having them. She wanted a baby desperately. She and Stuart had been trying for months with no luck.

‘Don’t you want a child?’ she asked me, scraping idly at a last clinging patch of latex, ‘Wouldn’t you love to have a baby?’ Jeanie was like that. Never worried about the conventions. A Samoan woman would never talk about such things.

‘Not really,’ I said. I meant not now. Not here in Samoa. My mother of course was full of plans, but I was not ready, then, for village life, wife of a pastor or matai, organising fiafia, singing in the church choir and attending women’s committee meetings. I had already been promised a title but had found a reason to turn it down.

‘I will be a loving auntie to your children,’ I said to Jeanie, ‘and you will bring them to me with all their little ailments.’ I remember her hugging me then, with tears in her eyes. We thought we were planning a life together. Surely it wasn’t just me? We both felt it?

‘Your children will come,’ I promised. ‘Your cycle might take time to adjust to the tropics. Palagi women often have difficulty at first.’

She looked at me with a kind of half smile. ‘Oh.’

‘And your husband? He wants children too?’

‘Yes. Yes of course.’ Jeanie gazed through the open door to the glaring yard beyond.

She seemed to have gone somewhere else. I wanted to touch her mind, bring her back. ‘What did he do, Stuart, before you came here?’

‘Oh,’ she shrugged, ‘worked in a law office. Not as a lawyer but a law clerk. Then …’ She had gone again.

‘Tell me.’

She spoke then with angry defiance, as if she knew she was being disloyal, but didn’t care. That’s how I read it. Her brute of a husband had lost his temper with a workmate who accused him of some kind of shady deal. They’d had an argument, he had hit the man.

‘It wasn’t all Stuart’s fault. The other man was a bully. But Stuart … really hurt him. Stuart lost his job. Then there was a court case. Stuart insisted on fighting it, wouldn’t admit guilt, and we lost everything – the case, our savings, Dad’s house.’

Jeanie looked at me, tearful, but smiling. ‘Gertrude’s summons was a complete godsend. You wouldn’t believe how wonderful that day was, when Dad told us. He took us to dinner at the pub. His half-sister, Aunt Mary, was there too. We knew there was some good news by the way he beamed and urged us to order what we liked. Then he stood, quite formal at the table, to make the announcement. We were going to Samoa! I shouted for joy and hugged him there in front of everyone. Even Stuart shook his hand. A miracle just when we needed it. I know there were problems, and Gertrude was not quite the fairy godmother I imagined, but here we are! With some kind of future. Stuart is happy, in a way, I think, which helps. If only Dad …’

‘He’ll adjust,’ I said. ‘Give him time.’ John’s shady paternity had ceased to be the talk of the town by then. But, according to Jeanie, he still felt the shock – the shame – keenly himself.

Jeanie stood and stretched. She was always quick to change her mood. Dark to light; pensive to full of energy.

‘Come for a swim,’ she said, laughing, teasing me. I don’t swim. I will wallow, demurely clad in a lavalava, if the beach is clean (a rare occurrence), but even in New Zealand I could never see the point of swimming. Snorkelling at Palolo Deep is worse. Floating face down, gazing at coral. Waste of time. Give me a good meal any day.

Jeanie pulled at my hand. ‘Come on. It’s so beautiful. You should, Elena!’ She was the beautiful one. I promised to walk over when I had closed the clinic. To tell the truth, I would rather watch her than the clouds of little reef fish. But she loved it. What didn’t she love about Samoa?

I was just locking up when Giles Metford from the High Commission came waddling and calling across the road.

‘Elena, Elena! Is Jeanie with you?’

Comical as ever from a distance – sweating inside his crumpled, grubby white suit, wild, faded hair in need of a cut, his red cheeks inexpertly shaved – but today so anxious and distracted I couldn’t make fun of the old gossip.

‘John O’Dowd’s had an accident,’ he puffed. ‘It looks bad. The police are up at the house now. Do come, Elena.’

‘The police?’ I asked ‘What about a doctor?’

‘That too, but it’s old CJ who has arrived.’

Oh dear. Old CJ was a complete imbecile of a palagi so-called doctor who had been given the job because his Samoan wife was valuable to the administration and also high born. Everyone tried to avoid being seen by CJ. He would be worse than useless.

I hurried to Palolo Deep while Giles brought a car. There she was, my Jeanie, floating face down out in the middle of the coral bowl, oblivious in her tropical paradise. When I called she came up dripping and waved. Oh it was a hard thing to shatter that sunlit joy. But she caught the mood quickly enough, swam to shore and came running over the path through the coral.

‘It’s your father,’ I said, and she moaned as if she knew already.

She wouldn’t stop to make herself decent; tied a lavalava over her dripping bikini while running to the car. I couldn’t keep up with her and thought for a moment they would leave me behind, but Giles wanted a decent doctor on the scene and waited.

I dried her hair and fixed it back as we drove up the hill.

That man, her husband, was on the steps watching the drive. There was blood on his shirt. Jeanie ran past him and into the house without a word. I came up more slowly.

As I climbed up the steps her husband shouted at me. ‘What? What are you looking at? It was nothing to do with me!’

Can you believe it! His wife’s father grievously hurt, his wife distraught, and all he can find to do is proclaim his innocence to the whole neighbourhood. I was about to give him a piece of my mind, but Giles pushed me inside, muttering some placatory rubbish in my ear. He was right of course. I was needed inside.

Quite a group there. The Landers, two police and CJ who wore a grave face but served no other earthly purpose. The sergeant, Salesi, was the one who had rung the hospital for an ambulance. John O’Dowd lay on a divan, flushed, semi-conscious, his breath snoring in and out heavily. He looked terrible, dried vomit on his shirt. I did the usual checks, and was immediately worried. His heart raced and his pupils reacted sluggishly. He felt insanely feverish. Mad old Simone handed me a bowl of iced water. She had obviously been trying to cool him down. She could be quite practical when it suited her. I rang the right people to alert them and made sure CJ would be sidelined when the ambulance arrived. Jeanie knelt beside her father, holding his hand, talking to him. Tears ran down her face, but she stayed calm, concentrating, willing her father, it seemed, to hold on to life.

Stuart came into the room then. He laid his hand on Jeanie’s shoulder, quite gently, I thought.

‘He went walkabout, poor old man. Out in the sun all day, evidently. I had no idea; couldn’t find him. I’ve told the police.’ His voice, low and urgent, hammered away at her, giving the details, the times. He was as white as a sheet and trembling.

Simone’s strident voice cut into the monologue. ‘I heard an argument. They were arguing!’

Hamish raised a warning finger but she turned to him angrily. ‘An argument! Hamish you heard it too. Tell them!’

He shrugged in a way that showed he agreed. Simone turned to us all, her pile of white hair flying this way and that. What a fiery woman she was! At times like this her French accent, which I suspect she cultivated, rolled and crashed around the English words.

‘Yes a so big argument! All that old gossip about John’s birth which we all have forgotten. On, on, on he hammered the words. We could hear so clearly every word in our garden. What kind of inheritance of the blood, he asked, had been passed on to Jeanie? He poured shame on that poor man – accused our John that he was knowing all along his bad blood and had hidden the facts. Then we saw John run out of the house as if stung by a bee. Hamish, Hamish we should have followed to calm the poor man! Shame on us!’

Jeanie looked up for a moment, straight into the eyes of her husband, then back to her father without a word. Stuart gave a sort of sob.

‘We were talking, that is all. Not an argument.’ And then in a wild outburst, ‘Oh where’s the bloody ambulance?’

It arrived, finally, just then. I don’t think John had any idea what was going on. He allowed himself to be stretchered out of the house, as inert and limp as a sack of flour. I rode with Jeanie and her father in the back, while CJ sat up front.

He lay flushed and tossing for two days. Very irregular heartbeat. Slowly he regained full consciousness, but wouldn’t eat. He let Jeanie hold his hand but seemed not to hear her when she spoke.

Tim Stokes, the surgeon, said they couldn’t get the heart to steady. ‘It should be a simple case of heatstroke,’ he said, wiping his big gingery hands on a towel, ‘but there doesn’t seem to be a will to improve. Even his daughter can’t buck him up.’

Tim told me that the silly man had gone walking up the cross-island road, must have wandered for several hours, up and down. Eventually, a couple of the girls from Papauta School saw him. They’d been sent further up the road to look for loa. The girls use the seeds as a dye and also export them to New Zealand, I understand. Very enterprising. Anyway, they found John O’Dowd sitting on a rock in the full blaze of midday, his head hanging, blood dripping from his nose. Those strapping Papauta girls, high-born every one, and trained to be sensible, manhandled him down to the school. Sala herself rang the Landers who fetched him down in their car. Goodness knows where Stuart had been. I never heard.

Jeanie lived at the hospital for two days. Sat on a little wooden chair beside him. I brought her food which she ate mechanically. He would never touch it. Clenched his teeth against any attempt to feed him. He was not rational. We had to put him on a drip. I stood behind her, one time, watching. She leaned her tired head back against my thigh, tears running down her cheeks.

‘I can feel him slipping away,’ she cried. ‘I can’t bring him back!’

John opened his bloodshot eyes, smiled at her, smiled up at me, and closed them again. That was all. I wanted to shake him; to drag his spirit into the world again. It was as if he had been cursed. Like a potent voodoo curse, that he had no power or will to fight.

‘He should pull through,’ I told her, but without much hope. ‘Surely the drip will give him some energy to fight this.’

But that night his heart stopped beating. Jeanie, whose finger was there, on the pulse in his wrist, felt it stop, heard the last sighing breath, and screamed for the doctor. But he was gone.

John was buried in the little graveyard at the plantation, next to Gertrude, which was ironic. Teo and I stood there at the back of the little crowd of plantation workers. Our mother came too. Now that she had won (in her eyes) the case over the land, she could afford to observe the niceties. It was she who had a white concrete cross placed on the tomb and ensured that it was heaped with wreaths and garlands. Jeanie’s face remained impassive as the priest read out the rites of interment. Not many of the palagi community were there. A dozen at most. My heart ached for Jeanie, standing there with Stuart at her side, but alone – I could tell she felt alone.

Teo felt it too. And showed it in his own careless way. In front of the husband, Teo put an arm around her, kissed her on both cheeks, then turned away without a glance at Stuart. To many there it seemed like a challenge. But Stuart was in a strangely subdued mood that day, his famous anger dormant. Tiresa, who saw the kiss too, was the one to erupt. Her face darkened. ‘Tama!’ she called, an insult to call her own son as if he were some underling. ‘Sau!’ And forcibly marched him off to help unload the umu.

There was a roast pig and taro and breadfruit, but it was a sad little feast, and no one stayed very long. Jeanie would eat nothing. She sat on the edge of her father’s grave – perfectly proper to show such grief, but a worry or irritation to her husband. Stuart could not leave her alone, though she clearly wished it. He kept going over to her, touching her arm. Arguing, I think, that she should join the guests. He wasn’t bullying her. He felt isolated without her, I suspect; no one else was talking to him. A strange man. Weak, as many bullies are when their props are removed. Jeanie was both his prop and the target of his bullying. That day she simply didn’t notice him. Their relationship had broken in some way with the death of the father. That estrangement was, I believe, a torment to Stuart. I only saw him twice after that and both times he was a mess.

We took Jeanie to Piula ‘to cheer her up’ Teo said, but he had a different reason. He knew it would be the last time he was able to behave in this free manner. Piula pool is famous for its clarity and beauty. Being brought up Catholics, of course we averted our eyes as we walked past the Methodist seminary rising above the sea on the promontory, an impressive concrete building, you have to admit, competitively large as are all buildings to do with religion in Samoa, but not as large and beautiful as our old Catholic seminary. We led Jeanie down the steep and winding path to the sea. A warm afternoon, it was, with a light breeze coming off the sea. Teo was excited, chatting wildly of this and that. I think he was apprehensive about the wedding. It would be a big event, as Ma‘atoe was high-born and the taupou of her village.

We hadn’t told Jeanie about Piula. It’s such a lovely surprise. She thought we were just going for a swim. The lagoon here is clean. No falela‘iti‘iti‘i to deposit their faeces at low tide.

‘Look!’ cried Teo, gesturing with pride as if he himself had made the pool.

Jeanie grinned at his excitement and was suitably impressed. It is beautiful. A perfectly formed little cave in the cliff disgorges a clear icy stream into the sea. Perhaps the young would-be pastors, or perhaps our ancestors long ago, have built a semicircular wall of black volcanic rocks to enclose the stream so that it becomes a cold pool deep enough to swim in. Even I enjoy this pool. It was a good thought of Teo’s. Jeanie always loved the water. She swam with him up into the cave, disappearing into the darkness and then floating down with the current, shouting with the chill. Over the rocks they climbed to wallow in the warm water of the lagoon. Then back into Piula’s cold freshness. I like to think of it as Samoa’s version of the Scandinavian sauna and snow routine. Much gentler of course. Our way of life is much gentler. They swam for a while, disappearing up into the darkness, their laughter echoing off the stone and pouring out to me in triplicate. It made me happy to hear them, that day. Sometimes Teo’s antics – his flirting and his sudden anti-palagi bursts of anger irritated me, but Piula is too peaceful for anxiety. I dipped myself then lay under a tree and watched them. Finally they came over and we ate our picnic. Teo told her then that he was to be married in a few weeks’ time and that he would have to behave himself after that. He said it lightly, making a joke, but I heard pain, too, behind his words. He stroked her wet arm lightly as he spoke, then rolled over on his stomach to look at her. She held his gaze; let his hand lie on her arm, near to her breast. I believe if I had not been there they may have made love. Perhaps that was why I was there – to make sure it didn’t happen.

‘Yes,’ she said, quite calmly. In those weeks after her father’s death Jeanie often seemed removed, as if mourning in some internal, hidden way, his loss. We had known him only briefly: he was there, then gone. His loss caused hardly a ripple in our lives. But Jeanie had been brought up by him. And now she was an orphan in a strange land. I think that awful husband could not begin to fill the void.

She picked up Teo’s hand where it lay on her, kissed the fingers and laid them back on his own thigh. It was a gesture of great gentleness, I thought, familiar, as if it had been performed often. I don’t imagine it had – where was the opportunity? – but a feeling of natural intimacy existed between them. They could have been lovers in another country. But neither was free.

‘They say the palolo will rise one week, maybe two before the wedding,’ said Teo. ‘Will you come? You must see it.’

This was more problematic. Everyone would be at the lagoon to watch the rise. Teo would have to watch his step.

I suggested – reluctantly I admit, but the older sister must sometimes keep the peace – that Stuart should come to see the rise too. The others shrugged and nodded. There was something dreamy about the two of them that day. It worried me rather. Perhaps it was simply Piula. There is something magic about the place. Surely it is older than the Methodists!

It occurs to me now that Francesca may have been conceived there at Piula. Did they swim up into the cave to lie together on the little sandy beach there, while I dozed in the shade outside? To have sprung into life at Piula – how perfect!

The palolo did indeed rise a week before Teo was married. A night as tumultuous (and eventually shocking) as the day at Piula was peaceful. My mother wanted the excitement of the rise well over before the wedding. There was no way she wanted her big day (she saw it as hers) upstaged by the sexual antics of those reef worms! Tiresa always predicted the day by the flowering of the moso‘oi tree and the smell of the reef. I simply watched the moon and the weather. Our patele prayed to God, so he said, and God told him, but I heard that his prediction was actually based on the excitement of the coconut crabs: if they clattered around more than usual in the night, and fought among themselves with extra vigour, the palolo were about to rise. We all had our theories, but amazingly, we all predicted the same day! How was that?

There is a beach between our village and the next, where it is easiest to wade, and the palolo rise in great quantities. The two villages usually join forces there for the tapalolo, though the spoils are not shared – every man woman and child for himself! An hour or two before dawn – that year it was late in October, the moon in its first quarter – we gathered at the beach in front of our village. Jeanie and Stuart arrived in their little car with their torches and reef shoes. I met them and handed them a net each and a bucket. Jeanie was full of it all, asking questions as fast as I could answer them.

Stuart drifted away for a while. In the dark I could just see him talking in a rather familiar fashion to Soloia, a young cousin who worked on the plantation. I resolved to keep an eye on him. By the smell of his breath he’d been drinking. But he came back to hook an arm rather possessively through Jeanie’s. Or was he intimidated by the press of people and the excitement? Since John’s death he seemed to hang around her in a rather pathetic way. He relied on Jeanie. Something unhealthy about his neediness.

Teo’s fiancée, Ma‘atoe, was there too with her entourage – she was village taupou, and insisted on having an attendant group of unmarried girls – a custom not always followed by those times, but Ma‘atoe and her family were old fashioned. Still are.

I love the sight on the beach and lagoon at tapalolo. It’s as if a small lighted city has suddenly sprung up, reflected in the water. Some carry electric torches, others kerosene lamps. Back then, several still favoured live flames made with rags, dipped in kerosene or pitch and tied to the end of sticks.

The air is always still. People are quiet at first, wading and peering, then netting the palolo in great sweeping scoops. The delicacy is actually the sexual organ of male and female reef worms. On this particular night, in a synchronised action, they release this part of their anatomy into the lagoon. The little gelatinous wriggling part, headed by one light-sensitive eye, makes for the surface – I suppose they think our torches are the dawn (if they have thoughts) and we scoop them up. It has to be at this particular pre-dawn time. With daylight, the hundreds of thousands of palolo release the eggs or sperm to get on with it, and then dissolve. But we get to them before that happens. To be honest I scoop them straight into my mouth. They are best totally fresh, eaten in the dark, though some prefer them fried with onion on toast, a barbaric practice in my opinion.

Jeanie was interested in the flavour – or was she pretending delight when I slipped a handful into her mouth? Stuart spat his back into the sea. They worked beside me for a while then we drifted in our own directions. The hunt becomes competitive, of course, and I am not immune when it comes to palolo!

It was a good harvest as I remember. When dawn came the sand was lined with buckets and bowls brimming with palolo. Some would go to the markets; most would be gorged on that day. No doubt Tiresa was intent on keeping some fresh enough to serve at the wedding feast. Did she freeze some? I’m trying to remember whether her fridge-freezer from New Zealand had arrived by then.

I watched the sun rise out of the sea, a beautiful fresh morning. What a pleasure it is that moment, after tapalolo, when the new sun warms a belly full of seafood! I hoped Jeanie was feeling the same. There she was, sitting on a fallen coconut tree, lost in thought. My dreamy Jeanie! I shouted to her, still full of pleasure, not guessing what was to come. She looked up briefly and raised a limp hand. I began to feel uneasy. Something was not right in the way she sat so still on such a morning. My mother was calling me to help carry the buckets back to our fale, but from further down the beach there were other shouts. Jeanie jumped up as if shot and stared towards the shouts, but they were calling for me. A doctor.

At that part of the beach, the coconut palms lean down right over the water, and low scrub is left to grow underneath them so that canoes may be tied there in rough weather. Two young men emerged from these bushes, half carrying, half dragging Stuart. Teo walked behind. ‘Elena!’ he shouted, ‘Elena!’

Stuart was bleeding badly. One hand flapped frightfully from the wrist as the men ran. It was attached by skin and flesh only, the joint severed. His face was a sheet of blood, the features drowned. I couldn’t tell at first if he was conscious or not. The men shouted that Stuart had stumbled into some traps, set to catch coconut crabs. Then, as he thrashed, had set off another which caught his ear. One of the fellows held up the severed ear with a sheepish grin. Good Lord, those traps should be banned. I would see to it that they were.

I did what I could to stop the bleed. Jeanie did not rush over immediately, which I thought was strange. She had sat again on the log as if in some dream. Or nightmare. It was only later, as I was attempting to move him, that she came to help. The ear wound was superficial; already the blood was clotting, but the hand was another matter. Stuart moaned and writhed as I tore strips of lavalava, applied a tourniquet, and tied the hand back in place as best I could. I couldn’t tell how much blood he had lost. I asked how long ago the accident had happened. The men shrugged and pointed over to Teo. Teo had found him they said.

My brother was sitting on the log beside Jeanie, his head hanging. The shock had got to him, I think. He was shaking violently, bright-eyed as if with a fever. Teo was never one to handle blood well, for all his bravura. I had known him faint at the sight of a bad slash from a bush knife.

Well, there was no time to see to Teo. We bundled Stuart into the back of his own car. Jeanie drove while I sat with him on my lap, hoping that we would meet the ambulance soon. Stuart was by now white as a ghost and shaking. He was incapable of answering any questions. Fortunately Jeanie knew his blood group – a common one as I remember. We didn’t carry large stocks in Apia in those days. (And I doubt anything is different today – another reason for me to take up that job.) Blood seeped through the cloth of the bandages. I tightened the tourniquet and prayed for the ambulance.

We met it as we drove into the hospital grounds. Palolo night was a busy one, evidently, for the hospital, cuts from the coral being the most common, severe indigestion from over-indulgence the second.

We saved Stuart. He lay for days like one dead, but he lived. Tim Stokes sewed ear and hand back on but neither took. Both wounds became infected and, in the end, even the hand had to be removed. Stuart took it all rather stoically, I thought. Given his argumentative manner and fierce temper, I expected a torrent of accusations, but he was too sick, perhaps, to press charges. When the police came questioning, he simply muttered that it was an accident and he didn’t remember which canoe or which trap.

I wonder? He was drunk, which would affect his memory, certainly. The man often carried a flask, so they said. But I suspect something happened between Stuart and Jeanie that night. Did they fight? Did she push him into the traps? Perhaps Teo was involved? From then on she was open in her dislike of her husband. She called infrequently at the hospital, and showed little interest in his progress – or lack of it. When Tim said Stuart must go back to New Zealand for treatment, Jeanie stayed in Samoa. The plantation was her excuse, but Jeanie had showed little interest in the business up to that time.

Tongues wagged of course. But, by that time, Teo was married.

Should I take the position? The question keeps battering at me. Teo can’t understand why I hesitate. (I should call him by his title, but keep forgetting, which just shows how much a palagi I have become.) He says I have no ties to New Zealand, and that senior registrar at the hospital would only lead to better things in the future. I think he means that it would add to our family’s pule (or his own!) if I had a senior position in the administration.

I’m tempted; of course I am. But it’s not true to say that I have no ties here. Teo means I’m not married with children. I have good friends. And there is Francesca, who needs me I feel. And Jeanie. Ann.

Last week, back in Samoa for a week of meetings, I visited Teo and Ma‘atoe in their smart new home, built beside Tiresa’s fale which became the guest house, following her death. I prefer the airy fale and always sleep there when I visit, which annoys Ma‘atoe, who thinks it disrespectful to her sparkling spare room with three mattresses on the bed and mosquito screen on the windows. It’s a shame, I suppose, that Ma‘atoe and I don’t get on. She’s a good, if conservative mother to their five children, who are all bright enough. The eldest boy is training to be a priest, and one of the girls has a position in the administration. But I would like to see them spread their wings – take their education further. Ma‘atoe says too many bright ones leave and never come back (looking at me severely); she feels a responsibility to keep them in the islands. I’ll bet young Simi breaks away though.

That evening, returning from matai choir practice, Teo stopped at the fale and sat down on the matting for a chat. He is a big man now – not as large as me – but of a fitting size for his position. He seemed easy and relaxed – always less pompous away from Ma‘atoe or his fellow matai. He propped his back against the Pou o le Tala – the same pole that our father had leaned against when he told us stories – while I lay out, head on some cushions, a lavalava covering my feet. The seaward breeze had died; most of the fale were dark; even the pigs were sleeping somewhere under the trees. It would be sixteen years since I had lived in Samoa for any length of time. Nothing much has changed. This is in some ways comfortable and in others a challenge. That night the familiarity seemed more important.

‘The title is a good one,’ said Teo, scratching his back against the pole, ‘Not split, and quite senior.’ The light of my little hurricane lamp lit his smile. He told me I would be only one step down from his own title. He knew my view of splitting titles and offering them to off-shore Samoans, simply – in my view – to attract foreign dollars in family or church donations. ‘Your village duties would allow you to make a real difference,’ he said, ‘and you could have a major say in the plantation if that interests you.’

Teo has an entrepreneurial streak. He’d like to get the plantation back into serious production, but his government and family duties keep him occupied. And, of course, he loves all that arguing, wheeling and dealing, making speeches. Teo has become quite a noted faipule.

‘It’s tempting,’ I said, and meant it. That old dragon Gertrude would smile in her grave to know I was genuinely interested in cacao. But this was too good an opportunity to explore another matter. I had been waiting for the chance. Plantation policy could wait.

‘Do you remember Jeanie Roper?’ I asked

The mats rustled as Teo shifted his weight. I watched his face. For a while he said nothing, but looked back at me steadily, trying to read me, I suppose.

‘That’s a long time ago,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, I remember her. Of course.’ He showed no particular emotion. His lack of emotion was of interest to me though. My brother still enjoys gossip.

I told him that I’d come across her recently; that she’d changed her name. That she’d dumped Stuart years ago and had a grown-up daughter.

Teo grunted and made to get up. ‘All in the past,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I’m interested. Think about the job though. You would certainly get it. Title and job, I can guarantee.’

Off he strode, across to the house. I thought it strange. He had seemed settled in for a good talk.

My meeting with health officials in Apia was brief. There was an expectancy, I could feel, that I might soon be senior to them, and they were eager to display efficiency. I left the building and wandered along Beach Road, looking for changes in the two years since my last visit. A new hotel, a face-lift for the library. A building flying a foreign flag I didn’t recognise.

The clouds that had been massing most of the morning over the peaks were rolling down towards the sea, threatening rain. I had forgotten how regular the midday rain was and had no umbrella with me. As the first fat drops landed, I reached the verandah of a fancy new nightclub. There was a bench there and I sat, watching the road become a lake, water sheet off roofs, gutters overflow. Shoppers and street vendors, cars too, paused and waited for the blinding downpour to ease. It is such a pleasure to feel the humidity sucked out of the air each day; the brief freshness after rain is so sweet!

As I turned from the roaring rain to examine the group of nightclubs, I realised I was sitting exactly where the door to the old Tivoli Theatre had been. That seedy old building that had seen so many film evenings, dances and shows. The Women’s Committee play! I heard again the wild applause, the stamping and the shouts of laughter that night we put on the concert to raise funds for Maota o le Alofa: the ‘House of Love’ – the National Council of Women’s Centre. I have never seen Jeanie happier than at that time.

My mother, naturally, had a hand in the planning. She was head of the Women’s Committee in our nu‘u and our district. But the Masiofo herself headed the enterprise. As head of state’s wife she was determined to leave a monument to women in the new independent Samoa – a place where women from all over the islands could meet, stay, attend sessions on hygiene and baby care, hold performances. Plans were underway at the time to build a new Fale Fono down at Mulinu‘u, so it was only natural that our powerful Women’s Committees should want a prestigious building of their own.

Donations were called for throughout the islands, but the Masiofo wanted a focal event. So the concert was planned. This was to have not only the usual programme of singing and dancing items from various villages, but an ambitious performance of the famous legend of Sina and the King of Fiji. The Masiofo thought I might have some fancy palagi knowledge of theatrical staging. We were together at university in Wellington for a year and she knew that I had briefly joined the drama club there. But Jeanie had a much broader knowledge. She loved the theatre and had been active in her local drama group back in New Zealand. I roped Jeanie in, and together we helped turn the usual simple performance of an old story into a full-scale event with stage lights, scenery, an interval, and a cast of thousands!

Jeanie had such energy at that time! Stuart was back in hospital in New Zealand. Or maybe out of hospital. Jeanie told me she had broken with him; had told him not to come back. She didn’t want him. She spoke so fiercely! The plantation was hers, she said, not his. He had only made matters worse in every way; had hounded her father to his death and beaten her and she never wanted to set eyes on him again. Such a change from before, when she seemed to accept him in a passive sort of way. Perhaps his absence had brought her to the realisation that they were bad for each other. I asked her if Stuart accepted all this. Would he stay in New Zealand?

‘He’d better,’ was her reply.

A fierce little tiger she was!

But she threw herself into the concert. She suggested we borrow lights from the local palagi drama group and string them up in the old, rat-ridden rafters of the Tivoli; we could beg old banana crates from the wharf and build scenery. We could build a long low flat and paint it to look like a canoe, for the scene where the King of Fiji and all his attendants cross the sea. Tiresa and the Masiofo were impressed with all this knowledge and planning and added the full force of their influence to the production.

Any scepticism Jeanie might have had about the dramatic quality of the piece was shattered at the first rehearsal. We were both electrified. Laughing one minute; moved the next. And this was only a rehearsal!

Jeanie grinned over to me in the darkened old theatre. ‘You didn’t say your mother was a star.’

Tiresa had the part of the giant lizard and performed it with relish, wagging her great sacking tail back and forth, snorting and gnashing; the fiercest lizard on earth was my mother, her swollen limb down to half its size by now and giving her so much more movement. She was proud of me over that at least – and proud of her Women’s Committees which had carried out the campaign so fiercely.

Jeanie had worked out an ingenious way, using undulating blue ribbons of ‘sea’, to make the lizard appear to be lifted magically out of the water. Tiresa thought it was marvellous, all the theatricals, and was delighted to be the centre of one of the most dramatic moments. All the animosity had gone by now, with the plantation divided and Teo safely married. She was as pleased with Jeanie’s ingenuity as everyone else.

All the other main parts – Sina, her mother, the king and so on, were of course taken by the highest-ranking women. The two highest masiofo – equal in rank – split the role of Sina, each playing half the show. Most of the cast were over fifty and few under fourteen stone. Jeanie, with her new-found theatrical zeal, looked doubtful when she was introduced to the cast, but she quickly changed her opinion when she saw them perform.

‘They must choose their highest ranking women by the way they sing and dance,’ she muttered to me at one time after a particularly beautiful song.

‘Why not?’ I whispered back. ‘Of course that comes into it.’

Disaster nearly struck when our beautiful cut-out canoe, which stretched almost the full width of the stage, could not fit all the ample behinds of the King of Fiji’s retinue. No matter how much shuffling went on, a paddler stuck out into the sea at each end. Our Masiofo decreed that the two largest behinds would have to go for this scene. Roars of laughter and measuring followed. Jeanie was in stitches. The two women who retired did so with pride – it was certainly no shame to be large.

Jeanie was down at the theatre soon after dawn on the day of the performance. I was there early too. I heard her behind the curtain – so happy, so quick to pick up friendships. Two of the cast were with her – the two who had been ousted from the canoe. All three were laughing and singing together. The women – from Savai‘i – I didn’t know them – had sat on a piece of scenery while they waited to come back on stage and had smashed it to matchsticks! Together with Jeanie they were improvising a replacement with woven palm leaves and flowers. Much nicer than the painted original!

In came the truckloads of leaves and flowers to transform the aging Tivoli into a garden paradise. Women’s Committees from all over Samoa were there, all in their separate village uniforms – a flowery decoration in itself – everyone singing and laughing as they wove garlands and plaited palm leaves. Salamasina brought the girls from Papauta School down to lend a hand. We all shouted with appreciation as the Masiofo arrived with a huge piece of tapa cloth – big enough to hang as a backdrop for the whole stage. A wonderful Tongan tapa. It was the Masiofo’s share of a giant half mile by fifteen foot piece, given by Tonga to celebrate Samoan independence. She was so generous and energetic that day – didn’t turn a hair, later that night, when some performers poked a hole in the priceless piece so they could get a glimpse of the audience.

Tiresa had roped Teo into helping cut and transport the palm leaves. He came with a bad grace, I thought, not contributing at all to the general festive occasion. When he asked for Jeanie, I sent him and his towering pile of fronds in the wrong direction. I didn’t want his frowns spoiling such a glorious day.

Everyone came to the show. The whole palagi population and all the Samoan hierarchy. The Tivoli was packed. Crowds stood at the back and lined the side walls. Frangipani scented the air and our beautiful stage lights turned the garlands and the scenery into a magic grotto. Oh it was all glorious! Jeanie and I hugged each other as the curtain went up and the first beautiful chorus began. The woman who played Sina’s mother took five minutes to die convulsively, a wedge of breadfruit stuck in her throat. It brought the house down. Howls of laughter. Next moment all were in tears – Jeanie and me included – at the sad lament that followed.

The lizard’s rise from the sea – a technical triumph – earned a special round of applause.

Teo was there of course, without Ma‘atoe. He didn’t look any happier. When he approached us at the end of the show, pushing his way through the boil of excited women, I made sure to stick with Jeanie.

‘What’s eating you, brother? Does marriage not suit?’ Then I whispered in his ear. ‘Take your long face away. This is a happy day for Jeanie, she needs this.’

I had a feeling that he would have dashed her spirits. I wonder now whether she was pregnant and had told him. At any rate he pulled a face at me and wandered away. We were free to laugh and dance with the women, to drive out to the Masiofo’s house for a magnificent celebratory supper-cum-breakfast. I drove Jeanie back to her big old house as dawn was breaking. We fell into bed there, exhausted.

Perhaps the happiest day of my life. Surely one of hers too?

PART FOUR

Tapalolo

Ann / Jeanie

Ann enjoys the warm fug of the staff-room. It smells of coffee, apple cores and the peculiar pungency that much-used exercise books give off. Her own office is tidier, the air fresher, but today she prefers to do her marking at the big table along with the other teachers. She writes what she hopes is not too damning a remark at the end of a particularly silly essay, then looks up at a touch on her shoulder. Laurel Manning, the registrar, wants a word. Laurel jerks her head in the direction of the door. A private word.

‘That man has been around again,’ she says when the door to her spotless little cubby hole of an office is closed. ‘He was harassing poor Dawn for information about you. She came to me and I sent him away with a flea in his ear.’ Laurel rolls her eyes. ‘I told him it would be the police next time. Should I call them now, do you think?’

Ann shakes her head, smiling. She doesn’t trust her voice.

Laurel watches her over the top of her famous flamboyant glasses. Ruby red rims today. ‘Ann, I advise calling the police at once. He looks an unpleasant sort. Dawn couldn’t manage him and she’s usually pretty brisk.’ Laurel herself can be more than brisk and knows it. ‘Quite apart from anything else, we can’t have a nutter snooping around the girls.’

‘You’re probably right.’ But Ann feels uneasy. What would the police want to know?

Laurel lays a large farmer’s hand on Ann’s shoulder. Laurel had run a dairy herd single-handed before she took on office work. This big blowsy woman is surprisingly competent at everything she tackles. Backstage at the school shows she performs miracles. ‘Leave it all to me,’ she says. ‘Police don’t need to know all the details. I’ll just report the nuisance, ask them to check his record, and inform them that they’ll get a ring if he comes here again. You don’t know his name do you?’

Ann shakes her head. ‘No idea. He came to the house too. Thought he knew me from the past. Michael and his dogs sent him off.’

Laurel laughs. ‘That’d be right. He won’t be back there again then.’ She eyes Ann shrewdly. ‘Don’t let him get to you, Ann. That’s what gives them kicks, the sad bastards. Bloody stalkers. There was someone once started following one of my daughters …’

Ann can’t concentrate on Laurel’s story. She’s wishing she could dismiss Stuart as a sad loser. This wretched persistence! Why, after all these years, does he think he has any hold – any rights over her? Any normal person would have got on with his life and forgotten her.

And, if he is so persistent, has he found out about Francesca? She has a sudden picture of the night of the palolo rising, and breaks out into a sweat.

‘Here you’d better sit down,’ Laurel says. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

The memory of that night – the tapalolo – the beauty and horror of it, always comes back to Jeanie as a series of vivid pictures that jerk one to the next like a badly cut movie. Pieces of what happened have disappeared from her memory; other moments have recurred randomly and often, sometimes terrifyingly, always unbidden.

She remembers the scene on the beach in the dark a few hours before dawn. The heavy scented air, the pulsing cicadas, the excitement of the gathered crowd. Her own tension. Surely there is no need for this expectant quiet– palolo won’t have ears – but all the same people are keeping their voices down; children are cuffed if they fool around. Then a cry from somewhere and they all light their lamps and torches and head out into the lagoon – a bright moving river of reflections, fanning out right and left until the river becomes a miniature lighted city. She has seen glow-worms on a dripping bank trick the eye in the same way; the close blue lights looking like a distant city. Here the lights are warm and yellow in the velvet night. Out on the reef the thin white line of surf breaking is faintly illuminated by a low half-moon. The water of the lagoon, which a few moments ago was utterly calm, is now a boil of people wading, bending low over their lanterns to peer, then moving on, searching for the first wriggling palolo.

She remembers Elena urging her forward and Stuart holding her arm, pulling her back.

‘Who cares about fishy worms?’ he whispers in her ear. His wet hands slide around to feel her breasts, her crotch. ‘Leave the poor palolo to their mating. We can have our own fun.’ He points to a secluded patch of scrub back on the beach, where canoes are tied up. ‘Come on, then.’

But Jeanie pulls away and wades after Elena, who is steaming through the water like a tank, heading for the reef.

Did Stuart follow then? Jeanie doesn’t remember. She looks for Teo – surely he’ll be here – but how would she recognise him among all these bare and glistening brown backs? Ma‘atoe wades past in a dream. Teo’s fiancée. Elena pointed her out earlier. Then she was surrounded with her group of attendant unmarried girls. Her aualuma. Now Ma‘atoe is alone. She carries no light, seems more interested in dipping her arms in the water, wetting her hair and throwing it back in a glistening arc of droplets. Is she trying to attract Teo? It would seem not. This is not flirtatious behaviour, but rather self-absorbed. She doesn’t look around to see who might be following. Jeanie watches her with interest – perhaps jealousy? Teo’s fiancée is a large woman, her big breasts showing clearly through her plastered lavalava. She wades along slowly, humming to herself. Perhaps, thinks Jeanie, she is enjoying a few moments of freedom, without the aualuma, before the duties of a married woman rein her in. Ma‘atoe looks up at the sinking moon. Jeanie has always remembered that dreaming face – so innocent, so unsuspecting.

Then what? Elena, her broad face and beaming smile coming and going in flickering torchlight. Elena favours flaming rags soaked in pitch. A Samoan Statue of Liberty, knee-deep in the lagoon. She hands Jeanie a mess of translucent spaghetti. ‘Try, try! The females are best! Try the greeny ones! Try, Stuart!’

Stuart must have returned. He spits his palolo back into the water. Jeanie tries a couple, tentatively, and is surprised by the salty, creamy taste. Like caviar, but also like oyster. She laughs as Elena picks out another and holds it to her lantern. It still wriggles. ‘Look, a male! Taste this dull fellow too.’

Jeanie obeys, but can’t taste a difference. Now Elena is bending with her torch over the water and Jeanie gasps to see a mass of illuminated wriggling forms, thinner than pencils and about as long, twisting and curling their way towards the light.

‘Scoop! Scoop!’ cries Elena, wading forward and away. Stuart takes Jeanie’s arm again. He wants to go back. Wants more from her. But she is enjoying herself and shakes her head at him. She bends to net the little wriggling things, and remembers netting whitebait on the river banks back home. But this haul is far more plentiful. This richness, this exuberance, she thinks, it’s why I love it here.

Later, Teo is there. He has crept up behind her and, giggling, slides a handful of palolo over her shoulders. They slip down under her shirt and over her breasts. She gasps, looking around, but no one is watching. The feel of those palolo is almost unbearably sexy. ‘Teo,’ she laughs, ‘you’re outrageous!’

He dangles a single palolo over her mouth and she puts out her tongue to accept it. ‘Turn off your torch,’ he whispers. She turns it off. The moon has disappeared below the horizon. There is a faint pale line to the sky in the east, but for the moment they are in blackness. Teo comes in close behind her; slides one wet arm around her and nuzzles her neck. ‘Delicious,’ he says, laughing again, as he licks off a palolo. She can feel him hardening against her and would like to turn around, but they are both encumbered with equipment. He sings something softly, pulling away again to dance around her in the water, showing off, showing his erection, careless, it would seem, of anyone or anything. Jeanie peers into the dark but can see nothing but the points of light some distance away now.

Teo moves in close again. ‘Tapalolo is a night of love for everyone,’ he says giggling into her neck. His jittery excitement puts Jeanie on edge too. She knows this shouldn’t be happening, but perhaps on a night like this it’s acceptable? He pushes up against her buttocks and Jeanie moans. It is beautiful there, far from the shore, deep in the water of the dark lagoon, beautiful. Jeanie remembers that sharp pleasure as a moment of mad sweetness before the storm. Did he lift her up? Did he come inside her? Jeanie remembers only the excitement, the sweetness.

And the horror that followed. Stuart’s face, lit by his own lantern, silent and intent, watching them. Watching with enjoyment. Could it have been that? Yes, a queer mixture of fury and triumph. He nods at Jeanie then, a threatening, brisk little dip of the head. She understands that look. It means trouble for you later on my girl.

And then the image disappears. Suddenly Stuart’s face disappears as if it has been an apparition – a warning born of her own guilt. But no, she felt no guilt. He must have dowsed his lantern.

Did Teo see him? If so he paid little attention. He bites her neck and dances away through the water, still, it seems, in a state of high excitement. Jeanie smiles to see him prance. That wild, lovely boy. Is he after further conquests? Perhaps Tapalolo is Teo’s stag night!

Was there a gap then, or did the next frightful scene follow immediately? Jeanie only remembers being back near the beach, near the group of canoes. Attracted perhaps by muffled cries. Under a clump of bushes she can just make out her husband struggling on the sand, lying on a woman: his shorts down and bare white buttocks gleaming. The brutal silent heave of his body. The woman’s legs thrash. His hand is clamped over her mouth. Everything about this scene is ugly; Jeanie’s heart beats hard when it replays in her mind – as it does often, both in dreams or when she’s awake.

Teo is suddenly there, growling like an animal. He tears Stuart off Ma‘atoe, heaves him back against the solid side of a paopao. Jeanie hears the crack and Stuart’s curse. Ma‘atoe is crying out, but now it is Teo who holds her and places a hand (more gently) over her mouth. He says something quietly to her and she nods; her cries reduce to soft, desperate moans. Teo speaks again, more urgently. He looks up to see Jeanie, but motions her away. In his face a savage fury. Suddenly the dancing show-off has become serious, capable. Dangerous. He leads Ma‘atoe down to the water and begins to wash her carefully. There is blood on her face. When he reaches her private parts Ma‘atoe pushes him away and cleans herself, moaning with the pain.

Stuart laughs then, makes a remark that infuriates Teo. Jeanie can’t hear what is said, but Stuart’s tone is scornful, taunting. Again that triumphant edge. She’s sure he doesn’t see her. Teo leaves his fiancée and stands facing Stuart who has his shorts up now and seems bent on a fight. He half runs over the sand, kicking over a bucket of palolo, barrelling into Teo and throwing him bodily into one of the paopao. Jeanie is terrified for Teo – Stuart is very violent when angry. He stands now over the sprawling Teo.

‘Think twice before touching my wife again,’ Stuart growls, ‘or I’ll do your precious village virgin again. And again! She’s very tasty.’

Jeanie closes her eyes in shame.

There is no need to fear for Teo. He rises from the canoe in a red rage, brandishing a bush knife. Silently, but with a fine accuracy, he slashes at Stuart, slicing at an ear and then a hand, grunting with each cut, before tossing the knife high in the air and away. The rising sun catches the turning bloody blade.

Teo stands over the stricken Stuart. His eyes are bright. He pants out his words as if he’s been running.

‘You have raped the taupou of this village,’ he says, every word clear in the early dawn light. ’If they hear of this, they will kill you. Without doubt they will kill you. I should kill you – and would probably be excused by any Samoan jury. If you breathe one word of this, I will certainly denounce you. And so will she. One word!’

Jeanie remembers thinking how quick he was to recover; how quick to plan ahead. Stuart groans on the sand, his face a sheet of blood, holding the ruined hand with his good one.

And then, somehow, she’s further away, sitting on a log, watching the villagers decant the glistening palolo into bowls, laughing and dancing their pleasure. The dark violence a dream that perhaps never happened.

But there is Teo and the other men shouting and dragging the wounded Stuart. No sign of Ma‘atoe. Jeanie can’t move. She doesn’t want ever to move again. Elena goes to the bloody man, calls out instructions, tears at material and binds. Those two – brother and sister – seem able to manage anything. Jeanie is shaking. She cannot seem to manage even her own emotions.

Teo goes to the sea and slowly washes Stuart’s blood from his own body. He comes up and sits near her on the log.

‘I only spared your husband’s life,’ he says, breathing through his nose, ‘to save Ma‘atoe from dishonour. And the girls who should have been attending her.’ His hands are shaking. ‘Those girls would be punished severely for forgetting their duty.’

He talks on, but Jeanie can’t remember the words. The villagers would be thinking he was comforting a palagi whose husband has had a nasty accident. He’s explaining something about his being a modern Samoan, not like Ma‘atoe’s ‘aiga. About being prepared to accept the fact that she’s no longer a virgin. He will try to hide what happened from her family. Jeanie is still seeing the rage on Teo’s face; the spiteful triumph on Stuart’s.

His too bright eyes search her face. ‘Try to forget it all.’ Jeanie recognises the fear in his voice. ‘Stuart must forget it too. Persuade him if you can.’

‘Will you forget it?’ asks Jeanie. It all feels wrong to her. ‘Will Ma‘atoe?’

‘We will try,’ he says, looking down again at those violent hands. ‘It will be the best thing.’ As he stands he says, pointedly, ‘For all of us.’

A few days later Ma‘atoe and Teo were married – very successfully, Elena reported. Many fine mats exchanged, many expensive gifts paraded, proclaimed and duly applauded, much food consumed.

Jeanie stayed at home.

Jeanie visited Stuart twice in hospital. The first time was when the police came with their questions. Stuart grumpily corroborated Teo’s report – agreed that it was all an accident. The police were clearly puzzled about the extent of his injuries. The traps were lethal, certainly, and should be outlawed, they said, but to almost sever a hand?

‘He’d been drinking,’ Jeanie said, as if that explained everything, ‘and he’s a heavy man. Perhaps he struggled too hard.’

Stuart glowered at her, but made no further comment. The police nodded approvingly and left with good wishes for recovery. Jeanie thought they suspected a fight, but were relieved to have no complaint laid. Teo was about to be married after all.

Her second visit was a few days before Stuart was to be flown to New Zealand for reconstructive surgery. Jeanie told him flatly that she was staying in Samoa.

‘What?’ he cried. ‘You can’t do that!’ His colour was high; his skin a sheen of sweat; the wound infected. ‘What will people think?’

A whirring electric fan wagged its heavy head slowly back and forth, back and forth.

Jeanie steeled herself. He looked so desperate. And so ill. ‘I don’t want to live with you any longer, Stuart,’ she said as firmly as she could manage. ’I don’t respect you any more.’ When he said nothing she added, ‘Or love you.’

‘Jeanie,’ he cried. ‘What’s this nonsense? We’re married.’

‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry Stuart, but you must surely see why.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ he shouted. ‘That monster attacked me!’ Tears were pooling in his bloodshot eyes. Jeanie wanted to cry too.

‘Ssh, ssh,’ she whispered. ‘Go back home and forget it all.’

‘But why? Why, Jeanie? I’ve been a good husband, haven’t I?’

‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘No you haven’t, Stuart. I realise that now. Not even before the … the other night.’

He shifted uncomfortably, moaned with the pain (or was he putting it on?) and looked at her again. Tears ran freely down his cheeks. She wiped them for him.

‘Jeanie,’ he said, his voice rising, ‘can’t you see how it is? You are my one good thing. The only worthwhile thing I have. I can’t lose you, don’t you see that?’

‘I’m not a possession,’ said Jeanie.

‘Yes you are! We possess each other. We’re married. You can’t change that!’

Jeanie tried to keep her thoughts steady against the torrent of his need. ‘I can change it, Stuart, that’s why I’m not coming with you. You mustn’t come back here. Our marriage is over.’

It must have cost him a great effort, sick and weak as he was, but he managed to rein in the panic then. He smiled at her. Reached a hand towards her. ‘Sweetheart, this is just a bad patch we’re having. Everything will come right, I know it will. You won’t be able to cope on your own – here all alone. And you deserve a break. Please come with me to New Zealand. I love you Jeanie.’

He was so definite, so sure of the rightness of what he was saying. Jeanie could think of no further argument.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, moving to the door.

‘Wait! Who will look after me back there? Jeanie, wait!’ The raw panic was back in his voice.

Jeanie turned. ‘Your mother will. She knows when you’re arriving. She’ll meet you.’

‘Oh God,’ whispered Stuart, ‘you’re inhuman, Jeanie.’

She felt inhuman too, running crying to the car. But after he’d gone; after the ambulance had taken him to the airport; when she heard the drone of the plane lifting him away from the islands across the Pacific, south to New Zealand, Jeanie felt a sudden stab of pure joy.

Elena noticed the lightness in her step when she turned up to the filariasis clinic. ‘Don’t tell me it’s Christmas already?’

‘Stuart’s gone,’ said Jeanie.

Elena straightened up. Looked at her shrewdly. ‘Want to talk about it?’

Jeanie couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Not really. I should never have married him. I’ve told him it’s over.’

‘Ue! Strong lady!’ Elena did a little admiring dance, swaying around Jeanie. Then sighed and looked at the tub of warm plaster. ‘Can the new free lady still get her arms dirty I wonder?’

They laughed together. Jeanie supposed she should feel bad, but the sense of freedom was intoxicating. She looked out, those next few days on a different, clear world full of possibilities. Colours were brighter, sounds gentler, the world seemed warm and friendly. She didn’t mind being alone at the big house, or up at the plantation. No task was too difficult. Often she thought of her father. He should be here now to share this. But also, she realised, with a new clarity, that he had laid other burdens on her. His dark times had sometimes been difficult, his reliance on her, stifling. It was not easy, even now, to admit that.

Jeanie looked over the plantation one day and thought, I can put all that behind me now. Stuart. And Dad. I can live for myself now. Make a good life here.

The wonderful Women’s Committee show was the beginning of that new life.

Jeanie saw Teo after the show at the Tivoli Theatre. He stood a little apart, searching the chattering, excited crowd. Looking for her? For Ma‘atoe? He was dressed casually in a flowery shirt and lavalava. Most of the men – palagi and Samoan – were in white shirts; ties even. This was a formal evening. Teo looked somehow downhearted, distracted. He talked briefly to a triumphant and resplendent member of the cast, but obviously didn’t express sufficient enthusiasm for the performance. Jeanie watched the woman drift away and Teo stand alone again.

In the months since the palolo rising, she’d hardly seen Teo. A couple of times he had come to the plantation with his family’s cacao for drying. But she had been busy and so had he. They had not talked about that night. Jeanie wanted to forget and supposed Teo felt the same. This evening, so full of pleasure and excitement, she had no desire to speak to him. She walked in another direction when she saw him approach.

Then, a week later, he walked quietly into the room that was now her office, up at the plantation. The day was stifling. The big ceiling fan made no impression on the sluggish air. Jeanie had left the desk and was standing at the window, flapping at her face with a piece of paper.

Teo smiled at her, a little uncertain, she thought. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let’s hope the rain arrives soon.’ He mopped at his brow with a snowy handkerchief.

‘Would you like a drink? Tea? Something cold?’ Jeanie couldn’t find the right tone. Wanted him to go.

Teo sighed, shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re having.’

While Jeanie went to give the housegirl instructions, Teo stood at the door, looking out.

‘The boys have brought up twenty sacks of beans,’ he called to her. ‘Can you handle them just now?’

‘As long as they stack them under cover. Here comes the rain.’

All so formal. ‘Shall we go out on the verandah?’ asked Jeanie.

But Teo preferred to stay inside. They sat facing each other across the desk, the tray of tea and sandwiches between them.

With the downpour came an ease in their tension.

‘How have you been, Teo?’ Jeanie asked. He was different. The old bravado gone.

Teo smiled at her. ‘Not too bad. There is something though …’ He drifted into silence and then asked, abruptly, ‘Is Stuart coming back?’

‘No … No … I’ve told him not to. That’s all finished.’

‘Your marriage?’

‘Yes.’ Jeanie found that she was crying. Tears pouring down.

Teo offered her the beautiful handkerchief, frowning. ‘You’re unhappy about leaving that man?’

‘No!’ she shouted over the drumming rain. ‘I’m extremely happy, Teo!’ Hiccupping, then, through her tears. ‘God knows why I’m crying! It’s good. I’m happy!’ The roaring, sheeting water seemed to her a blessing. After some hesitation, dabbing at her face, she added, ‘How is your wife?’.

Teo waited while she cleaned herself up. ‘Ma‘atoe is not well,’ he said carefully. ‘Since that night. She has fears. Nightmares. I’m not – allowed – to …’ he shrugged helplessly. And then the words came out in a rush. ‘She can’t bear to have me touch her. Surely I could help her get over it but, when we try, she gets nearly hysterical and wants to scream. She stuffs the sheet into her mouth, to hide her fear from the family.’ Teo looks at her miserably. ‘Your damn husband.’

‘Can Elena help?’

‘Ma‘atoe will tell no one. Not her mother. Not her sister. She is so ashamed. She should have stayed with the aualuma. They should have stayed with her. She’s ashamed also that she can’t … you know, with me.’ Teo looked away.

Now he is the one who will cry, thought Jeanie. He can’t talk to anyone else about this – and surely I am the wrong person.

‘Do you feel bad about what you did to Stuart?’ Jeanie was curious about this. Teo was so violent that night! The sight of him raising that great bush knife, slashing in the half light of dawn, kept recurring in Jeanie’s mind. Did he relive it too?

He looked at her in amazement. ‘No! I should have killed him.’ His crooked grin tormented. ‘I’ve become too civilised, eh? But worse …’ The drumming rain stopped abruptly and the words came out too loud. ‘Worse,’ he said more quietly, looking sharply at the back room to make sure the house girl was not eavesdropping.

Jeanie waited but it seemed Teo could not bring out the words. She knew, then, what the dreadful news would be. Teo finally told her that Ma‘atoe was pregnant and that the baby could only be Stuart’s. Ma‘atoe had not even told Teo, it seemed, but had gone, in desperation, to an old lady, known to her family, and asked for an abortion. The old woman had examined her and given her a potion which had not worked. Now it was too late. Ma‘atoe was five months pregnant.

‘She hates what is growing inside her,’ Teo whispered fiercely, ‘and so do I. She’s sick at the idea of this baby and says she will kill it when it comes. She pushes and punches at her stomach, but it remains inside. She says I must take it away when it’s born and smother it, and we must say it died. She says that’s what the old custom was, and now she understands the wisdom of it.’

Jeanie was horrified to hear his savage words. ‘But Teo, you can’t do that! Not these days!’

He looked at her. ‘It seems wrong to you?’

‘Of course it does. It is wrong. You know that.’

‘But abortion would have been right?’

‘Yes,’ Jeanie admitted. ‘Yes. But a baby born alive … that’s different.’

Teo nodded then, miserably. ‘I feel it too. I wish I felt like Ma‘atoe but I don’t. I don’t think I could smother a baby.’ He slapped hard at his chest, as if punishing the heart within. ‘I’m too modern, see! Too much palagi learning! But if I don’t she will want to. Or maybe get that old lady to. The old one might do it secretly.’

There was silence in the room. Teo watched her. Jeanie knew what was coming and wanted desperately to avoid the words.

‘Will you take the baby?’ he asked. ‘If I bring it secretly to you, would you take it away – get it adopted, whatever, back in New Zealand? Where my wife would never know?’

He asked such a huge thing simply, as a child might ask a parent. Take this trouble away from me. You deal with it.

‘Teo,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry but it couldn’t be done. Not in any secrecy. People would have to know.’

‘Just think about it,’ Teo pleaded. ‘There’s time yet. After all it is Stuart’s child.’

She wondered when he would get around to that.

‘I don’t know that I could live with ending a child’s life,’ he said, watching her.

Jeanie caught that look – manipulative, calculating. ‘Go away!’ she shouted, too angry to carry on; too appalled at his demand. ‘You could live with nearly killing Stuart! That was not a problem to your precious scruples. Just go away please. And don’t you dare dream of hurting the baby.’

‘Just think about it anyway,’ he said. And was out of the door before she could throw something at him.

But of course she had to think about it. At times she railed against Teo, cursed him for laying this burden at her door. Her new-found freedom, so precious, so fresh and intoxicating was suddenly threatened. At these times she thrust Teo’s request savagely from her mind, tried to recreate the sense of lightness she enjoyed only a few days ago. But the idea, the possibility was seeded and she could not ignore it. Could she somehow smuggle a new-born baby away? Have it adopted elsewhere, where no one could discover its dreadful conception? Its rejection?

She thought, of course, of her father, and wept for him all over again. Granny Stella had told Jeanie how she had adopted little John – the little Chinese orphan nobody wanted. Perhaps Granny Stella knew all the awful circumstances – the rape and the suicide – and didn’t care. Granny Stella had been expecting a child of her own, and yet she had adopted Jeanie’s father and loved him – given him a good life. Jeanie felt an increasing weight of duty and fought bitterly to escape it.

Sometimes the temptation of adopting the baby herself crept in to haunt her. A little half-Samoan baby! But that would be madness. Jeanie was too close to all this mess. The child must have a start in life that could never be traced back to the night of the tapalolo. If Stuart found out …

No. Jeanie buried that idea.

Elena was standing in the shade of the banana trees calling up to Jeanie. Her dusty Mini Moke parked below the verandah.

‘Come along madam, we have work to do! And bring your cheque book.’

It always lifted Jeanie’s spirits to see Elena. Was that big woman ever downhearted?

‘Quick, no time to waste!’ called Elena, dancing a few steps in her impatience. ‘Already the queue will be stretching onto the pavement.’

Jeanie ran down the steps laughing, ready for whatever new adventure Elena had dreamed up.

‘No picnic today,’ Elena shouted over the growling engine, her hair escaping its usual neat bun in the rush of air as they bounced down to Beach Road. ‘You have a duty to perform, and so do I. A lesson for you on Samoan custom.’

The big stores on Beach Road were crowded. Matua had come in yesterday with its usual supplies, but today the pushing crowd was different. Not so many palagi, and many more Samoan women.

Elena, joining in the mêlée on the pavement, guided Jeanie away from the Burns Philp store, where most were heading; decided on Hedstroms. ‘I heard they have something a bit special. Let’s see.’

Jeanie had never seen Elena hurry before. Even in a medical crisis she remained calm. Today the crowd mood seemed infectious. Her friend jostled and shoved, elbowing her way to the Manchester department where a large crowd was gathered. No feeling of a queue. It was every woman for herself.

‘Keep close behind me,’ shouted Elena, ‘or you’ll be trampled to death!’

Jeanie took her point. The buyers were all twice her size, three times her weight, and intent on reaching the counter first.

‘I’ll explain later,’ Elena laughed. ‘Just get out your cheque book and sign for whatever I say.’

Jeanie had no idea why she must buy a whole bolt of white sea-island cotton and another bolt of delicate spotted muslin, also white. But she dutifully paid out the money and watched Elena also buy two bolts. Hedstroms seemed to have an endless supply. Elena hoisted three of the bolts high on her shoulder, leaving Jeanie to struggle in her wake with the final bolt of muslin.

‘White Sunday!’ Elena shouted as they bounced back up to Jeanie’s. ‘Don’t get me started on it.’

But of course Jeanie had no need to prompt her friend. As they unrolled the spotless material and cut it into three-or four-yard lengths, Elena explained. As people with money, she and Jeanie were expected to contribute to the expenses of White Sunday. Elena must supply her wider ‘aiga, and Jeanie should make a worthwhile contribution to the families who worked at the plantation.

‘They’ll do the sewing, thank goodness; we buy what they can’t afford.’

It turned out White Sunday was a special children’s day. Jeanie looked sharply at Elena. Was this some hint? Did Elena know about Ma‘atoe? But Elena was chatting on, serene as usual, directing operations, folding the cut pieces and piling them ready for distribution.

‘Every child must have a new set of clothes – white clothes – and the fancier the better. Wait till you see what our women can create from this material! Ruffles, flounces, ribbons, smart little shirts. Oh the children will look so gorgeous,’ Elena turned to Jeanie, flourishing the scissors fiercely, ‘and I will probably be the only woman in Samoa to fight the custom.’

Jeanie laughed at Elena’s frown. Surely she must be joking. ‘Doesn’t look like fighting the custom to me. Look at all this you’re supplying.’

‘That’s different,’ said Elena, wagging her head back and forth. ‘I have to help, that’s only natural; I’m a salaried woman. I would be a very bad Samoan if I didn’t contribute. Doesn’t mean I have to approve.’

Elena had a doctor’s view of the way children were cared for. This one day of the year the children had new clothes and were served by their elders at a special feast. The rest of the year, Elena said sadly, they came last in the food chain. Many of the children she doctored were malnourished. Oh they had food in their bellies, but all the protein that should be contributing to growing strong young bones and healthy children’s bodies, was served to the matai first, then other men, then the women, and lastly to the children.

‘Then they make up for it one day of the year, with White Sunday. Oh it makes me mad! We should get the Women’s Committees onto it. They are the only ones who could change it. But would they? I doubt it. White Sunday is definitely fa‘asamoa.’

‘But surely this is a missionary thing? White Sunday?’

‘Oh yes. But we take what we like from Christianity and make it our own. Haven’t you noticed?’ Elena folded the last piece of cloth, looked with satisfaction at the pile. ‘You know Tomasi who works for you?’ she said. Jeanie nodded. ‘He was arrested in the weekend for stealing two watches from Hedstroms. He has four daughters. He was going to sell the watches to buy material for their dresses. So. You must give him some of this material.’

Elena laughed suddenly. ‘But I love White Sunday. It is so beautiful and the children are so excited. You must come to our village and see.’ She smiled at her friend. ‘I’m a mixed bag, eh?’

Jeanie kept thinking that Elena might be hinting at some knowledge, though it didn’t seem so. When Jeanie asked about Teo, Elena simply shrugged. ‘Oh, Teo. He and that precious Ma‘atoe have some problems I think.’

‘Problems?’ Jeanie tried to sound disinterested.

‘You know Teo – big flirt. Now he must settle down. And my guess is his wife is a jealous sort.’ Elena shot Jeanie a sharp look. ‘He hasn’t been hanging round you?’

‘No. I’ve seen him a couple of times at the plantation.’ Jeanie felt herself flushing.

‘Well anyway, he’s got the archaeology bug again. He wants to spend a month or two up there helping at the dig. There’s no one keeping an eye at the moment. Turn your back for a month and the creepers will have covered the mound again.’

‘He’s gone up on his own?’

Again that sharp look. ‘Jeanie. That time is over.’

Jeanie frowned. ‘With me too – don’t worry Elena.’

‘Anyway, his jealous wife has gone too, to keep an eye on him. They’re living in the little fale up there.’ Elena grinned, made a little weaving dance with her hands, ‘So romantic, with the mosquitoes and the ghosts. Good for making babies.’

Jeanie turned away; fussed with the pile of material to hide her dismay. All this talk of children and babies!

Elena sensed it; came close and stroked her arm. ‘I shouldn’t talk so much. You would like a baby too I think? We must find you a good man.’

Jeanie couldn’t speak.

If it hadn’t been for the twinned worries – the unwanted baby and the unwanted return of Stuart – Jeanie would have loved White Sunday. As it was, the spectacle and excitement of it helped her forget. The church in Elena’s village was filled with proud parents and their resplendent, spotless children. One by one, the children trotted up to the front to recite a few lines from the Bible. Elena dug Jeanie in the ribs, pointing to a crouching father, prompting his tongue-tied little son as he struggled with his sentence. Sighs of relief from the whole congregation when the little fellow finally stumbled through. Others – usually the older ones – stood up proudly, strutted down to the altar amid appreciative clicking of tongues if the dress was particularly beautiful, and then reeled off several verses in clear voices. Sometimes a proud parent stood at the end of a particularly good recital to take a bow along with the child.

After the lengthy service, the children, now dressed in their second new outfits – coloured this time – sat on the ground outside in a big circle while the elders served them a great feast of pork, chicken, pisupo, fish, palusami, taro, soft white bread, cakes, mangoes and breadfruit.

Elena moaned. ‘Look at it all! Spread all this protein over a year and the children would grow healthy! As it is, the elders will have a good feast too on the leftovers. This all-or-nothing sort of thing. It makes me ashamed.’ But she was only half protesting. The children were so happy. The parents so proud.

Jeanie thought of Teo and Ma‘atoe away in the bush, struggling with what was growing inside her. It seemed so much in contrast with this happy day full of loved children. Perhaps they would come to terms with it. Perhaps that ancient place of their ancestors would help them to a wider view. Jeanie hoped that was what Teo had in mind – not simply a hiding place.

Later, over a cold drink in the shade of a fale, Elena mentioned the plantation. Were there any buyers yet?

Jeanie frowned at her friend. ‘You heard?’

Elena laughed. ‘Sweet girl, all Samoa knows it! Our family will try to buy, naturally. But you keep the Apia house, I hear?’

Jeanie sighed. What didn’t Elena hear? ‘Yes, I’ll keep the house.’

‘Perfect,’ cried Elena. ‘I have a plan for you. A job at the hospital. Permanent. You are not really a plantation sort of person. I knew that from the beginning. Come and work for me.’ She grinned widely, spreading her hands. ‘Perfect!’

Jeanie felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Have you heard also that Stuart is coming back?’

PART FIVE

Inheritance

Hamish

Simone brought the phone into my study. These days it seems the phone can follow us wherever we go in the house. A nasty trait. Next it will follow us into the garden, the car, on holiday. I hope I don’t live to experience it.

‘Another female doing her research,’ she said. ‘I told her you had written two books, full of all your knowledge, but evidently she would like to speak to you.’

Anyone who gets past Simone is a brave researcher, so I reached for the phone.

‘From Gore, for heavens’ sake,’ Simone added. ‘She must be a very rich student. Or wasteful. Ann Hope.’

The name rang a bell. My old brain is slow to make connections. It wasn’t until she began speaking that I knew who she was. She spoke formally, playing a part, pretending she was really interested in some event or other, or matter of legal importance in the islands. I was too shocked to register the question. After a slight pause, she asked if Simone was in the room.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well I will continue with my questions and try to slip in the real one in a moment or two. You remember who I am?’

I could scarcely manage another yes. Surely she would realise that at my age I could not dissemble? Never could for that matter. Especially with Simone’s gimlet eyes fixed on me.

‘Well here goes,’ she said. I could hear a smile in her voice. The wretched woman was enjoying herself!

I asked her to wait while I found pen and paper. Simone sighed, found them for me. After a few minutes of voluble questions from Ann Hope, and noncommittal answers from me, interspersed with a bit of shaky writing, Simone lost interest and left the room, muttering that lunch would be ready in ten minutes.

‘Will that be all?’ I asked, hoping that she would take the hint. I was sick of all this silly play.

‘I’m so sorry to ring, Hamish,’ she said then, in a completely different voice. Now she sounded like the old Jeanie. ‘Could you please tell me whether you have told Elena Levamanaia anything?’

I cleared my throat, thinking. Had I?

‘You remember Elena?’

I said that of course I did, I was not yet gaga.

The woman laughed and then became serious. ‘She has been to see me. She has also met Francesca.’

‘Who?’ I had no idea who she was talking about.

‘My – the daughter.’

‘I see.’ That wretched Elena. I knew she would ferret away.

‘She said she spoke to you. You didn’t tell her anything about the … the circumstances of my daughter’s birth?’

‘I did not,’ I said, outraged to think that she might suspect me of being loose-tongued. ‘Will that be all?’

My hands were shaking. I couldn’t wait to end the conversation.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to upset you.’

Obviously she could read my feelings down the wire. How women do that I have no idea. To me a voice on the phone is impersonal. And should be so.

‘Thank you,’ she said, then added, ‘There is one other matter. Stuart – you know my …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘He thinks he has found me. I may have put him off. He hasn’t been in touch with you?’ After a moment or two she added more sharply ‘Stuart?’

It was a jolt hearing her speak of him so soon after Simone had found his photograph. I suppose I finally answered in the negative; her sigh of relief was quite clear.

‘My daughter is an artist and is well and happy. I’m very proud of her.’

Even I could hear the warning note. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’ A great relief to put the damn thing down.

Simone was in the room in a flash, to push some button on the phone. She said it was beeping.

‘What did you not do?’ she asked.

I had no idea what she meant.

‘You said “no I did not” in very firm tones.’

I believe I was rather sharp with Simone. The whole conversation disturbed me more than I would like to admit. I told Simone some rubbish about the woman being too insistent and that I had refused to send her the answers she sought. Simone looked at me sharply, but let the matter lie.

After lunch, however, as I dozed over the Times crossword, the matter would not lie quiet in my own mind. The thought of Stuart finding Jeanie again must be desperate for her. She sounded quite in control over the phone, but then I am no judge of women’s emotions, as Simone would be quick to point out. I longed to talk to Simone, but how could I admit that I had acted secretly – criminally – all those years ago? If matters were about to unravel in some uncontrolled way, perhaps it would become necessary, but not yet. Not yet.

Jeanie Roper came to see me in my little shared office on Beach Road. It would have been 1967. April perhaps, or May. She came unannounced as I was sorting my papers into cardboard boxes. Simone and I had finally taken the difficult decision to leave Samoa. One of our boys had moved back to New Zealand (briefly as it turned out, but we were not to know that then) and was insistent that we return to enjoy the grandchildren. He may have meant ‘babysit them’. We had always thought that a time might come to return – either to New Zealand or France – when work and perhaps health gave out. Palagi don’t usually wait to die in Samoa, and most of our friends had long gone. But it would be a wrench, nonetheless, for both of us. We dreaded the next few months tying up ends, selling or renting the house.

I was feeling particularly grumpy the day Jeanie arrived. The old files and papers reminded me of the many interesting cases I had dealt with in Apia. What on earth would I find to fill my days back in New Zealand? But Jeanie was contrite and I felt I had to spare her some time.

We sat and chatted about the plantation while my boy brought us tea and sandwiches. Jeanie had begun to take an interest in the estate, which was doing better than many others, being in cacao. Something dreadful was happening to the new banana crops since the hurricane. New plants were planted and flourishing – supposedly an improved strain – but the fruit which left on the Tofua or Matua looking healthy, collapsed on arrival in New Zealand. They became ripe one day and black the next. Officials and experts were perplexed. Meanwhile, our principal export was in crisis. Jeanie could be pleased with her healthy cacao trees, but Samoa’s economy was going downhill fast. So it was a surprise to hear Jeanie say that she wanted to sell the estate.

‘Will you put it on the market for me?’ she asked. ‘Have you time before you go?’

I was pleased to have a little work, and pretty certain that there could be a quick sale.

‘But why? Why now when you are beginning to learn the ropes and trade efficiently?’

I wanted to ask about Stuart; what he thought of the matter. I’d heard he was on the way back. Simone had told me that Jeanie would not welcome his return, but I thought that a bit harsh, after his nasty accident. Surely they’d find a way of rubbing along again. Jeanie put me straight on that matter without my asking.

‘I’ve told Stuart I want a divorce,’ she said very firmly, her pretty little face determined. I thought of that time when Simone had described her as dangerous. ‘Could you draw up some papers? Is that what happens? We sign something and it’s over?’ She laughed in a tense kind of way. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the procedure.’

To me, this was all quite sudden and strange. We hadn’t seen Jeanie for a while – she often stayed in the house up at the plantation, but recently during the rehearsals and performance of the marvellous Women’s Committee play, she stayed in Apia and we saw her almost daily. She seemed on top of the world. Settled. We were so glad.

The question of divorce put the sale of the plantation in a different light. If I sold the estate and delivered the money to Jeanie, knowing that divorce was her intention, I could be accused of colluding with her to cheat Stuart out of a share. The law is pretty clear on that. Stuart could petition to block the sale. Caution on my part was advisable. Since Stuart was returning, I suggested, it might be better if they both came in and discussed the matter when he arrived.

‘Oh he won’t agree to it,’ she replied, rather grimly. ‘It’s my idea, not his. He thinks we can go on just as we used to. That’s the problem. I’ve written to him not to come back, that I don’t want to see him again, but he doesn’t believe me. I thought if we had a legal paper to present to him, he might understand that I mean business.’

I told her that divorce was a rather more prolonged and complicated matter than that. She had every right to petition for a legal separation, but she must produce grounds. Then, if they lived apart, after a certain length of time – five years in Western Samoan law – a separation could be declared legal.

‘Five years!’ she cried, looking at me as if I had presented her with a handful of cockroaches. ‘I just want it over and done with!’

I told her that if Stuart didn’t want a divorce then a ‘paper’, as she called it, couldn’t be signed. Unless she could cite grounds.

She was silent for a bit then, frowning. ‘What grounds would do?’

I recited them. Adultery, desertion, cruelty. Possibly habitual drunkenness, although since the plantation was in her name, she could not claim that he drank away the necessities of life.

‘He beat me,’ she said, then, in a small voice.

‘Well that could certainly be cited as grounds for divorce,’ I said. But I had the feeling that his beating her was not the reason. Something else.

‘And the sale of the plantation? This is connected to the divorce?’ A rather shady area for me. Possibly I shouldn’t have asked. But I was curious you see. Anyone would have been curious.

She said then that she was planning to leave Samoa, but that she wanted it kept a secret for the moment. She wanted to make sure that the plantation was hers to sell and that she need not share the proceeds with Stuart. The house in Apia she thought she might keep meantime, but the house and all the buildings on the plantation would go with the sale of the land. Clearly, she had thought it all out.

I was astonished. ‘I thought you were settling really well,’ I said. ‘Congratulations, by the way, on the performance at the Tivoli. You really made a big difference. We’ll miss you,’ I added.

‘You’re going,’ she said rather pointedly.

‘Elena will miss you. You and she make a great team.’

‘Elena’s going back too,’ she said. ‘For a while anyway. They want her back in New Zealand for something.’

I hadn’t heard that. But Elena was always coming and going. She’d be back.

Jeanie brought me back to the matter in hand. Did she have a right, she wanted to know, to refuse Stuart entry to her house? To the plantation?

Oh dear, oh dear. I certainly didn’t want to be dragged into this! Technically, I suppose she might. Both were in her name and very recently inherited. But it would surely be looked on as unkind to lock out a returning invalid who was still, in fact, married to her.

Jeanie frowned and bit her lip. She seemed to have no feeling at all that she was being unkind.

I pointed out that Stuart would possibly have no means of support if she insisted on selling the plantation and refusing him entry to the house. He might have some legal redress, as her partner of some years (only four, she was quick to point out) to some share of the plantation sale. I was quite shocked, to be honest, that she was able to harden her heart so.

Jeanie looked at me squarely. I think she realised how my mind was running.

‘What if I paid for a room at the hotel for him? The plantation could do that for him.’

I agreed that that would ease the matter, certainly.

Jeanie seemed to need, then, to persuade me that she had right on her side. She explained that Stuart had been a disaster on the plantation – too forceful in his dealings with the workforce. (‘He hit them too,’ she said, ‘and let them know he carried a gun.’) I was not quite sure she told the truth. His temper and impatience, she said, got in the way of good plantation practice and production went down when he was in charge.

Suddenly she seemed to lose patience with the whole conversation. She stood up and walked to the open door. Outside the midday downpour had just begun. Her voice was all but drowned in the roar.

‘Why does he have to come back?’ she said. ‘How can he think we can go on together? He knows I can’t stand him any more.’ She ran her hands through her hair and shuddered. ‘Can’t stand him anywhere near me.’

A crack of thunder underlined her mood. It was so perfectly timed I had to smile. She turned on me, fierce as a cat. ‘Hamish, this is no laughing matter. I am desperate, in case you haven’t noticed. Desperate. I never thought he would have the nerve to come back.’

Perhaps she felt she had been too outspoken. The rain and her outburst stopped at the same time. As the trees dripped outside and the sun reappeared, she sat again and we talked quite calmly about selling the plantation and the possibility of citing cruelty in a divorce proceeding. Certainly Simone and I had seen evidence of his violence towards her. If there was something she was holding back, it was none of my business. So I thought.

After she left, I had a rather cowardly thought, and looked up the Act to make sure my memory was correct. Indeed it was. Since Jeanie and Stuart were married in New Zealand, and had lived in Samoa for less than two years, any divorce proceedings would need to be dealt with in New Zealand. Rightly or wrongly, I decided to put all knowledge of divorce out of my head and to go ahead with the sale of my client’s plantation.

Naturally enough, Stuart’s return and rejection was the talk of the town. His appearance in the first month or two was rather gruesome – it was difficult to look at him squarely. The reconstructed ear swollen and red, the skin a different, furrier texture, the whorls quite imprecise. Simone felt the doctors had been foolish to try. ‘Those men they just want to experiment for their own glory, then when it turns out ugly, send him away back to Samoa where no one will criticise!’ She had a point, though it became very clear he had come back of his own volition – earlier perhaps than his plastic surgeon may have wished. The hand had not been saved. Some days he wore a stuffed glove. Mostly he let the raw stump show.

Jeanie had gone ahead and reserved a room for him at the Casino. She didn’t meet him. Simone knew about Jeanie’s arrangements, approving her strong stand against such a bully. I must admit I felt sorry for the fellow. It didn’t seem right. He was an invalid, for heaven’s sake. Surely, he deserved some common courtesy, for a few weeks at least.

Stuart must have come on Polynesian Airlines because there was no boat that week. He arrived next door in a taxi, clearly in a bad mood. Who wouldn’t be, having suffered the road from Faleolo in a Samoan taxi? He slammed the car door and shouted for Jeanie before even reaching the steps. Simone hurried to the verandah – shamefully eager to watch the explosions.

‘He knows what to expect,’ my wife muttered. ‘Jeanie has written all to him. Why has he not gone to the hotel?’

Jeanie did not appear. Stuart stumped up the steps with his case, banged it down on the verandah floor and wrenched at the door. Not a sound from inside. Even I was drawn into the drama by this time. Stuart hammered on the door, which was clearly locked. He disappeared around the back and we heard further shouts and hammering. The housegirl wasn’t there either it seemed.

‘He knows, he knows,’ moaned Simone. ‘Stupid man, go away.’

There was no sound for a while. Perhaps he was trying windows. Was Jeanie inside, hiding, or had she gone up to the plantation? Neither of us knew. Stuart came into sight again. He looked up and caught us prying. By this time I was wishing I was somewhere quite different. Something about the man was rather terrifying.

Over he came, a beeline through our hedge and across the lawn. I started to move inside but Simone, without a word for once, put out an arm to hold me. We both waited there as he stumped up the steps.

‘Hamish!’ he said, quite genial, holding out a hand which I shook. It was as if the last ten minutes’ ranting and frustration had never existed. But he had seen us! ‘Simone!’ For a moment I believe he thought of kissing her. ‘How good to see you again. Please forgive the appearance. The surgeon assures me the swelling and scarring will fade.’

There was an awkward moment as he waited, perhaps expecting to be invited in. Indeed I would have, if Simone had not spoken first.

‘Your wife is not in I think,’ she said. A flat, matter-of-fact statement; not welcoming at all.

Her tone seemed to make no impression. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose you have a spare key? She’s locked the door.’

‘But Stuart,’ said my fearless wife, ’she has written to you, no? There is a room for you at the Casino, no? She has said you two are separating? So sorry, to hear this, but you will be comfortable enough at the hotel.’

She can take your breath away, Simone. I admit I could scarcely breathe for fear of what would come next. I laid a hand on her arm, which she ignored. Stuart ignored me too. The two of them were involved in some kind of ritual in which I had ceased to exist.

‘No, no, no,’ said that poor, ugly man, still smiling. ‘Nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. She must have forgotten the day. You don’t have a key? I had thought …’

In fact, we did have a key, but Simone was shaking her head. ‘Hamish will drive you down to the hotel if you would like. Jeanie said it was booked in your name.’

He stood there looking at her. No expression at all now, the geniality gone but no hint of anger. This was the first time I felt afraid for Jeanie. Perhaps the accident had damaged the mind. Something mad in that blank look.

But he shook his head. ‘I’ll wait. She’ll be back soon.’ He looked at me expectantly.

‘Would you like a drink?’ I asked. How could I not? Simone could frown all she liked, but I had my scruples too. The man deserved a drink.

He smiled and came inside. Simone brought out a little food in the end, and Stuart had more than one whisky. Twice he went back across to check and returned smiling in a strange, disquieting way. When night fell, Simone took the matter in hand.

‘She is not coming, Stuart. I think you know this. You must accept the hotel.’

Then we saw the anger. Just a flash – widened eyes; tightened jaw. He stood abruptly and I moved to protect Simone. But he was gone, he and the suitcase, down the steps and into the night. Perhaps he slept on Jeanie’s verandah with the mosquitoes, because he was there again in the morning, banging on the door. After a while he gave up and busied himself lining up a row of pawpaw on a fallen stump.

‘Oh not again,’ muttered Simone.

Stuart’s wretched target practice. He liked to stand on the verandah and take pot shots at the pawpaw, slowly demolishing them until the stump was a glistening orange mess of fruit. In season he practised on mangos, which were smaller. Simone hated the waste, hated guns, hated the noise. She banged pots in the kitchen until it was over. Where he found his rifle was a mystery. Did he travel with it?

By mid-morning he came across again. I had not liked to leave Simone alone, so had delayed going to work. Stuart looked dreadful, unshaven, greyish skin, mad pale eyes.

‘She must be up at the plantation,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I ring?’

He must have rung five or six times but there was never a reply. I was beginning to feel rather desperate. Were we going to be stuck with him? Finally he accepted a ride to the hotel – ‘Just until I find out what has bloody happened. She must be somewhere.’

Simone said that a short half hour after I had driven him down, Jeanie turned up at the house. Goodness knows where she’d been – hiding inside or elsewhere. She didn’t tell even Simone.

That was only the beginning. Stuart stayed at the hotel, thank goodness, but turned up to the house almost every day, sometimes pleading, sometimes shouting. Often drunk. Once he came with a great bouquet of orchids. Jeanie never willingly let him in. Once he caught her off guard – forced his way past her and into the house. She ran out the back door, got into the car and drove away, with him running wildly down the drive after her. Later he returned to smash some furniture and crockery. He slept there for a couple of days, but the moment he went back to the hotel, Jeanie was there again, locking the door against him. By this time I had lost all sympathy for the fellow. He was making Jeanie’s life impossible; had become a degenerate stalker. No wonder she wanted rid of him. It was all highly embarrassing. He seemed to have lost touch with reality.

Stuart settled a little after about a month of this. The prowling visits became less frequent. It surprised me that he didn’t seek entry to the house legally. A petition may have been successful. Perhaps he had consulted another lawyer and been told to sort it out with the New Zealand justice system. I suspect the man was all bluster and lacked any drive of a constructive nature. He fell in with some of the harder drinkers at the Club; could be seen there most evenings in a jovial mood – to put it kindly. I wondered where the money came from; there was no evidence of a job. Giles – one of his drinking mates – said some of the men felt sorry for him and were ‘helping him out meantime’.

What he meant by ‘meantime’ became clear when Stuart visited me in my office one morning. This day he was reasonably presentable – clean shirt, freshly shaved, hair trimmed. For some reason I found his genial moods more intimidating than his belligerence.

‘Hamish!’ he said. ‘Sorry to come unannounced. Mind if I have a word?’

I gestured him to a chair.

‘Man to man?’ he asked.

I took this to mean off the record and unpaid. ‘I’m acting for your wife,’ I said pointedly. The fellow had been in law; he would know the rules.

‘Well, exactly,’ he ploughed on, settling into the chair and smiling at me in a knowing way. ‘The thing is, I’m short of cash. I imagine as her husband, I’m entitled to some of the income from the plantation?’

I cleared my throat, shuffled some papers while I thought. ‘She still pays your hotel bill?’

‘Well, yes.’ He waved the stump of his wrist as if dismissing this contribution. ‘But a fellow has other expenses. Especially an invalid. Jeanie is upset in some way – goodness knows what’s got into her head. She’s avoiding me.’ He leaned forward as if to include me in a significant truth. ‘You know, I wonder whether she has inherited her father’s depressive tendencies. She’s been acting most strangely.’

I tried to laugh at that. ‘Jeanie is certainly in her right mind. Very much so. I wouldn’t try that one on, Stuart.’

He leaned back, then. Looked at me in a calculating way. My hands were sweating. What was it about him that frightened me so much? A sort of stillness, I think. A bland intensity of expression that somehow threatened to break into violence. He was holding himself back and the effort showed.

‘You need your own lawyer,’ I said, wanting to get him out of the room. ‘When the plantation sells, he may be able to argue a portion of the value coming to you.’ I wanted to say small portion – or tiny. But I was suddenly desperate to see the back of him. He wouldn’t stay in control long, I felt.

He looked at me in amazement. ‘There’s no question of selling. Jeanie and I are here for the long haul, Hamish.’ He rose thrusting out his good hand. ‘Have a word about some cash will you? We shouldn’t need to resort to legal process.’ He looked at me pointedly, ‘Let’s have no nastiness.’

The threat was clear and we both knew it.

After Stuart left, I sat there thinking. I couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t heard that the plantation was on the market. It would be discussed at the Club, surely. Freehold plantations didn’t come up for sale often. Jeanie’s desire for divorce would also be common knowledge. Simone and her friends would have dissected it fully by now over their morning teas and during Simone’s weekly callisthenics classes in our garden. Perhaps their husbands would avoid that topic in Stuart’s presence, but he knew. Jeanie herself had made it clear, both in letters and in legal form. Either Stuart was playing a part, or he was in complete denial. I would have to be careful to protect Jeanie and her interests. Stuart, I felt, could play very dirty if forced out of his mind-set.

Simone asked me, a few days later, whether Jeanie was planning to leave Samoa.

‘I feel it,’ she pronounced. ‘I can feel some change in her. Hamish I should know. Her good friend.’

I tried to prevaricate; tried to turn the conversation, but bluster has no effect at all on Simone. ‘So it is true,’ she cried. ‘She has to get away from that man! So how can we help her, Hamish? How?’

I had been helping her in secret for some time. The last thing we needed was for Simone to find out. I pleaded with her for her silence. ‘You are quite right my dear, as usual. She plans to go I believe, but she needs it to be a complete surprise to Stuart. He must not follow her. You would understand.’

‘But of course I understand, you stupid man. I will breathe no word. You will see that I can keep a secret as well as you.’ She patted my cheek in a rather demeaning way and headed for the garden. I was sure she had something in mind and was immediately anxious.

The weeks that followed were ominously devoid of her questions and opinions. I found out later that she was busily spreading counter information to her circle of friends. Jeanie had been offered a job at the hospital; Jeanie would be travelling back and forth from Savai‘i on medical business so might not be seen for days or weeks sometimes; Jeanie had decided to take in boarders at the big house (this to discourage Stuart from arriving at all hours of the day and night). She even invented an imminent family visit from her Aunt Mary. I heard all these stories second-hand from various men at the club, without realising they originated in Simone’s fertile imagination. She was having fun. Perhaps she and Jeanie were laughing together and inventing new lies.

Meantime, I was completing a very successful sale of the plantation. The wider Levamanaia ‘aiga had joined forces and come up with a fair sum. The plantation would be in one piece again (and no doubt Gertrude would be raging from beyond the grave!). Jeanie would be quite well off. She arranged for a modest sum to be kept in my legal account to be paid to Stuart some weeks after she left. In my mind, there was no question of an equal division. She had inherited directly from her father only months earlier.

Once she popped into the office wanting to know about changing her name. ‘Can it be done simply?’ she asked. ‘Can it be made untraceable?’

I assured her that it was easy enough to simply change your name. Any bank, when she arrived back in New Zealand would probably happily open an account for her in any name she chose. But to do it legally, I told her, by deed poll, would be traceable. Records would be kept.

She looked at me in that stubborn, determined manner that I had begun to dread.

‘Could I change my passport, so there was no record of my entry into New Zealand?’

She was trying to draw me into shady areas, and I would not be drawn there. No, I told her; that would be illegal. That would be forgery. I began to fear her questions, you see. She didn’t seem to care about legality. Making a clean break from Stuart seemed, in her eyes, to justify any means. And she tried to make me feel that it was my duty to help her escape.

She changed tack. What would be the least traceable way of leaving the country? By plane or sea? I thought slipping quietly onto the banana boat at the last minute might be better than flying. Everyone knew who was arriving and leaving at Faleolo Airport. Flying was the favoured dramatic exit overseas for study or work. Crowds gathered with flowers and necklaces of shells to farewell the lucky few who flew away. The handful of tourists on the banana boat were usually foreigners. Jeanie could disembark at Fiji if she chose to, if the boat was going that way.

I was allowing myself to be drawn in despite all my scruples. There was something seductive about planning this clandestine escape. And given Stuart’s wretched stalking, his demands and threats, my actions felt at the time thoroughly justified.

‘Would I need a passport on the boat?’ she asked.

Yes, I said. There was no way to compromise with the passport. They might not check as she embarked, but wherever she disembarked there would be a customs check.

She stood up and paced my little room. I couldn’t see why she was so fussed. Surely Stuart wouldn’t go to the trouble to check customs controls?

‘Yes he would,’ she said, with a grim smile. ‘Oh yes he would. He would try everything. He knows the law too.’

A rather sour note to bring into the conversation, considering all I was doing to keep her plans quiet.

Later, after she’d left the islands, I did help her to deposit money in a new account in New Zealand under a new name. I was right. The bank in question had no scruples at all. I believe Jeanie would have been required to give an address and telephone number – nothing more. She never told me where she settled. I arranged a bank draft for a considerable amount to the account in question. Ann Hope was the name. I made no connection at the time. But later I wondered if she had falsified her passport. Her name was Ann Jeanie Roper. Perhaps, on that boat trip back to New Zealand, she had painstakingly altered the two r’s in Roper. In those days it might have been possible. Customs checks coming off the banana boat were probably cursory, and of course, in the nineteen-sixties, passports were primitive things compared to these electronic days.

Up until the day she left, I felt I had done nothing really unprincipled. My actions could be construed as a quiet helping hand to a client in trouble.

I had no idea about any baby. But what could I do at that late stage? I felt thoroughly compromised and very angry with Jeanie.

Jeanie came running across the garden and up the steps, not five minutes after Simone had left to help at the clinic.

‘Hamish, I need your help. Please, please don’t say no. Please!’

The poor girl looked quite distraught, bags under those pretty dark eyes, her clothes a mess. She kept looking back at her house. Perhaps she was worried Stuart might appear.

‘Here, calm down,’ I said, laying down my precious newspaper. In those days I had the Guardian Weekly flown in – an airmail version on tissue paper which was a lifeline to the real world. That edition contained dreadful news, I seem to remember, about civilian conditions in Vietnam.

She danced and fussed while I found a stone to weight the pages. Obviously something was up.

Naturally, I offered to help. At first I thought the request could easily be granted. She was finally off. Had booked a passage on the Matua, which had been tied up at the new wharf since yesterday and was leaving shortly. Would I drive her and her luggage down? She was in a ferment; fearful that Stuart might find out and wanting to board at the last possible moment. I agreed feeling a little excited to be part of her escape. The plantation was sold, her Apia house settled with a renting agency, all her affairs in order. I felt I had acted reasonably honourably; had done all I could to help her escape the intolerable situation with Stuart. Was quite proud of myself, if I remember rightly.

Jeanie thanked me breathlessly, planted a kiss on my head and ran back to her house. She said she’d be ready in half an hour. I must say she’d been quite enterprising. I hadn’t helped with booking the passage, or with sorting her effects. I expected the furniture to travel with her on the boat; that she’d have arranged cartage already, but was wrong on that count. She left it behind.

Jeanie was ready on the drive when I backed the Datsun up. Three suitcases stood there ready, along with a backpack and a large basket covered with a muslin cloth. Jeanie herself was dressed rather extraordinarily – a big shapeless mumu with some sort of large overcoat over that. I had only ever seen her neat as a button. She must have been sweltering. I assumed these were clothes that wouldn’t fit in her suitcases.

We loaded the car, Jeanie hopping and fussing over everything, nervous as a flea despite her weight of clothes. The basket went in last. She settled it gently onto the back seat, wedging it tightly with the backpack; wouldn’t let me touch it. Food, Jeanie said, and some fragile things. I thought no more about it and we set off for the wharf. A short trip.

But just before we arrived, near the bottom of Leifiifi Street, the baby cried.

‘Stop, stop!’ cried Jeanie. ‘Stop please, Hamish!’

I looked at her in amazement. ‘I thought I heard a baby!’ I was making a joke, you see. Knew it couldn’t have been.

‘Hamish, Hamish,’ she cried, ‘don’t look. Just pull in over there.’ She pointed to a patch of shade, and then turned in her seat to fuss at the basket.

Well it was a baby. Jeanie was desperate for me not to know; didn’t want me implicated, perhaps, or feared that I would ruin her plans. But the baby had other ideas. It cried for a moment, despite Jeanie’s jiggling of the basket. Nothing would do but she must get out a bottle and settle the tiny thing down. Jeanie giving me pleading glances, and me huffing and puffing as well I might.

I told her I would have no part of this. That we must return to the house. That what she was planning amounted to kidnap for all I knew. That my reputation and standing in the legal profession would be severely compromised if I became party to her mad plan. Jeanie nodded grimly at all my protestations without a word. She continued to feed the mite, who settled after a bit. I saw love in her eyes. In that desperate, desperate situation, she looked at the little scrap of a baby with tenderness.

‘If you don’t help,’ she said quietly, ‘you may well be signing this baby’s death warrant.’ Then, in a whisper, she told me the whole shocking story. I was absolutely appalled. What a dreadful crisis that poor young woman had been dealing with, on her own, all these months. We had suspected a fight between Teo and Stuart – everyone had. But we had guessed it was over Jeanie. In retelling the story she had gone quite white with the fear and emotion of it. There was nothing serious between her and Teo, she insisted, just a bit of innocent flirting. But then Stuart involved in a rape! Of Teo’s fiancée! What a dreadful, spiteful deed! I could scarcely imagine the recriminations and shame if the story had got out. Stuart would have been lynched. This explained why he had not laid a complaint. I lost all sympathy for the wretch.

Jeanie pleaded with me to be silent. If anything came to light, she said, I could safely say that she had tricked me, and that I had no idea a baby was involved. She said the baby – a little girl – had been dumped at her door a week ago. Jeanie had been at her wits’ end keeping the whole thing quiet until the banana boat came in.

I told her she should report the whole matter to the police. It was my duty to say so, but the endless implications were as clear to me as to her. Clearer perhaps. The assault. The rape. The shame to Ma‘atoe and the aualuma; the hidden pregnancy; the crime of abandoning the baby. I was very, very angry with Teo for putting the burden on poor Jeanie. He should have reported Stuart immediately. But then I could also imagine his dilemma. I knew Ma‘atoe’s family. They were definitely of the old fa‘asamoa. Very strict and traditional. And she a taupou.

Jeanie told me that she would probably have the baby adopted in some other country. That she planned to pretend to give birth on the boat – hence the shapeless clothes. Goodness knows how she thought she could get away with that. A mad, desperate plan.

But with the baby asleep and covered and the ship about to sail, I thought she might get away with smuggling it aboard.

I closed my mind to the whole matter and drove her onto the wharf. I knew the officer on duty, Paul, and chatted to him while Jeanie took the backpack and basket to her cabin. Paul and I carried her cases up the gangplank. At the cabin door Jeanie gave me a quick kiss and touched my sleeve in that light-fingered way she had.

Her eyes were shining. Perhaps with tears, but I sensed there was happiness too. Simone would have known.

‘Don’t let Stuart know,’ she said. ‘Not ever.’

I promised. She was so brave. I think I would have promised her anything at that moment. I should have felt a great weight of guilt, I suppose, but at the time I believe I felt rather proud. I longed to tell Simone – wouldn’t she have laughed and cheered!

I never knew what happened on the voyage. For all I knew the baby could have died. When the Matua next came back into port a fortnight later, I made a point of going down to the club, as the officers usually ended up there. Paul was very much in attendance, chatting up the girls in his usual overt way. He nodded to me, but we didn’t speak. I never heard any gossip about an illegitimate baby on board. Or a birth. The ruined shipment of bananas and the collapse of the banana export trade was all everyone was talking about. Lucky for Jeanie, perhaps. Or perhaps she had convinced the officers to stay mum with some invented story. Such a little slip of a thing. She could be very appealing.

The hardest thing was not telling Simone. She knew, of course, that Jeanie had gone. Knew it almost at once and suspected the Matua. She badgered me, naturally, suspecting that I knew more than I was letting on, but for once I think I was able to keep the truth from her. Clever Simone somehow managed to disguise Jeanie’s absence for a good four weeks. Then she put out various titbits of gossip, implying that Jeanie had taken off with a handsome man to New Caledonia. Or Tahiti. Or was it Papua New Guinea? Oh she enjoyed herself over all that! Invented a dark fellow with flashing eyes, in banking was it? Or some foreign business? Apia was abuzz.

Stuart heard the rumours of course. By that time he’d realised that Jeanie had closed his account at the Casino and left him a thousand tala from the sale of the plantation. He raged up to our house – I’d closed the office by then and we were in the process of packing ourselves.

‘One thousand tala!’ he shouted. ‘I should get far more than that! How much did the plantation sell for?’

I wouldn’t tell him.

‘I have a right to know,’ he said. ‘I’m her husband for God’s sake.’

The wretched fellow was still in denial. I could hardly look him in the eye knowing what I now knew. ‘My client,’ I told him, ‘has lived apart from you for the best part of a year. She will soon have grounds, if she is in New Zealand, to apply for a formal separation.’ Simone, who was in the room, ready at hand if needed, said I looked rather smug to give him this news.

He changed tack then. Sat down, uninvited and buried his head in his one good hand. His clothes were dirty and his breath smelled vile. Goodness knows where he was sleeping.

‘Please help me to find her,’ he said, his voice broken. ‘I’m sure I can patch it up with her.’ He looked up at the two of us, watching, I believe, to see our reaction. ‘I know I could have been a better husband.’

‘You beat her,’ said Simone flatly. ‘She has grounds for divorce, Stuart, let alone a separation.’

‘I just want another chance,’ he said, wheedling, displaying his stump. ‘Where did she go?’

Simone picked up a vase as if she would throw it. Then turned her back on him. ‘You’ve heard the rumours,’ she said. ‘Who knows what is true?’

Now she was the smug one. I stood up, taking courage from my doughty wife. ‘Jeanie Roper is my client. Or was. You mustn’t come here for information or consideration Stuart. Your former wife is hostile to you and I must respect her wishes.’

Legal terminology is wonderful sometimes.

There was the anger again, the tightened lips, the quick step towards me. And there was Simone, in the doorway, drawn to her full height, clutching some kind of kitchen weapon and fixing him with a severe Gallic eye. Stuart muttered something and left.

Simone, at her best, can be just as wonderful as the law.

It was Giles, of course, who broke my complacent little bubble. He came over to me in the club one night, rather drunk, his face shining with sweat, holding out a glass of whisky for me.

‘Here old chap, have one on me,’ he said, slumping into the chair next to me.

The offer of a drink from Giles was rare. He must have thought I had useful information, or perhaps he needed advice. I thanked him and we sipped for a while.

Sure enough he was after gossip. ‘I heard a little bird say you were seen helping a certain lady aboard the Matua last month. True?’

Good God, where did the man get his information? I swear Giles must have spies all around Samoa. More than once I have wondered whether his sloppy exterior was a cover for his being some kind of intelligence gatherer for the High Commission. But surely not in Samoa!

I fixed Giles with what I hoped was a humorous stare. ‘Giles, whatever are you doing snooping around listening to ridiculous gossip?’ I tried to laugh. ‘I’m a married man, Giles.’

He was in no way deterred. I wish, sometimes, that I could prevaricate more easily.

‘The little bird says it was Jeanie Roper and that she was decidedly pregnant. Did you help her run away, Hamish, from her legal husband?’

Giles’ bloodshot eyes looked alarmingly vindictive. I was shocked. I thought we were friends. I would have expected a little chuckle and an elbow in the ribs at worst. He sat there, sipping his whisky, eying me over the rim. Whatever could I say to defuse this dangerous, if inaccurate piece of gossip?

‘Giles,’ I said firmly, ‘whatever your nasty little bird saw is none of your business. If Jeanie Roper decided to escape from her brutal and insensitive husband, it is entirely her affair. And didn’t I hear that she was working for the clinic over on Savai‘i? For goodness sake Giles, you are overstepping the mark. Think what damage such gossip could do to Jeanie. And to me. Don’t you dare to pass on any whisper of that piece of poisonous gossip to anyone else. What’s happened to you, Giles?’ I could see my words alarmed Giles.

‘Look here,’ he blustered, ‘I mean no harm. It’s just that I heard …’

‘I’m not interested in what you heard.’

‘The thing is, Stuart owes me money. Rather a lot of money. I was helping him out until the plantation sold. If his wife has run off with the whole caboodle, where does that leave me?’

‘No doubt,’ I said coldly, ‘Stuart will receive some share of the sale. I suggest you ask him.’

I shouldn’t have said that last bit. Perhaps it gave Giles some hope of recompense if he moved quickly. The fool told Stuart his wife had left on the boat and that he believed she was pregnant. Two days later, Stuart had gone, to search, Giles told me, for his unborn child. Appalling. So Giles’s gossip backfired on him. Stuart never repaid him. I could only pray that Simone’s clever stories had provided Jeanie with enough time to disappear.

I didn’t see Jeanie again for over twenty years. Simone and I have kept our house in Apia. We return occasionally. Under the pretext of managing our own house, I have managed Jeanie’s too and seen that the rental proceeds have been deposited in Ann Hope’s account, but I have never heard from her, not a word.

Until these last few weeks.

I have written this record hoping it to be a clear statement of events as I saw them in the nineteen-sixties. If the matter comes to light, there may be need of such a document. I do not wish this account to be made available in any way, to any person, unless Jeanie Roper (also known as Ann Hope) requests it. I do not regret my actions. In my opinion, Stuart Roper has no claim whatsoever on the child raised by Jeanie Roper, nor to any further proceeds from properties owned by my former client Jeanie Roper.

Hamish Lander, Wellington 1990

PART SIX

Truth

Elena

The exhibition put on by the final year students at Francesca’s art school in Dunedin was to me a riotous affair. On the first day at least. Not perhaps Francesca’s contribution – her display was more restrained, but some of the other creations took your breath away. So audacious. So rude. I couldn’t keep a straight face as Francesca steered me around the various displays, explaining the serious meaning behind what often seemed to me pretentious rubbish.

‘Don’t laugh,’ she protested, as my giggles broke out. ‘Michael’s right behind you.’ The artist – a weedy fellow with lank hair and torn, paint-spattered jeans was trying not to watch my reaction, to his – whatever it was. A shapeless mass of plaster of Paris, which looked for all the world like a heap of those bandages we wrapped around swollen limbs in Samoa during the filariasis campaign. I glanced at the boy to see whether he might be Samoan, and saw him blush through his acne. Poor sensitive lad. I changed my laughter to a nod of appreciation and moved on quickly.

Francesca watched my reactions anxiously. ‘Don’t you like them?’

‘Some are lovely,’ I said, and meant it. Some of the designs on fabric were full of colour and invention. Francesca’s Pacific series was striking, though perhaps a little restrained for my taste. She would benefit from a visit to the islands and I hoped, of course, to engineer this in the future.

‘My friend Tala will buy some of this for her shop,’ I assured her.

Francesca wriggled with pleasure. She was quite a naïve young woman, I thought, not too full of pretentious art school ideas and mannerisms. Her clothes, mind you, followed the ugly student trend of the day – black stockings with the feet cut out roughly, and various layers of rags and lace draped around. At least Francesca’s layers were bright and clean. All yellow and cream, she was, apart from the legs, and a long draped scarf of her own design – an orange and white pattern of leaves. Her hair, washed and combed for the occasion, fell loose down her back. I longed to hug this lanky, angular niece. But had to restrain myself on that front, for her mother’s sake. One day, one day …

Jeanie – Ann – was driving over from Gore and would meet us for lunch at a little café Francesca had chosen. She said, laughing a little, that her mother was shy of big cities and preferred somewhere quiet. A garden setting. A back street. I thought of lively little Jeanie hiding her identity all these years. Repressing her outgoing nature. It seemed all out of proportion. I suspected that a reclusive life had become ingrained – a habit that needed breaking. This meeting would be a start, I felt. I was as excited as Francesca that morning. The three of us together!

We broke off our tour. Francesca wanted to keep the winning installation a surprise for later. Her boyfriend Carl had won some valuable sculpture prize and Francesca was all lit up with the news.

‘Now we can afford to move in together!’ she said, her dark eyes full of happiness, ‘A real flat, not a student’s squat. And a buyer for my work! I’m just so excited! You’re a doll, Elena!’ She took my arm and we danced along to the car in the highest of good spirits.

Ann was there already, out in the garden of the café, smiling to see us so full of ourselves. Francesca ran to her mother, hugging her wildly. ‘I passed, I passed! My designs got a B plus! I got my diploma!’

Ann cried out with pleasure and held her excited daughter. ‘Wonderful, wonderful! You clever thing.’

They were such a happy pair. I hadn’t even thought to ask about pass or fail. Soon Francesca remembered me and introduced us properly. I played my part, shaking Ann’s hand, trying not to smile too broadly.

Ann nodded, still beaming, tears in her eyes. ‘Fran has talked about you,’ she said. ‘I hope she has thanked you for your support.’

Her voice, quiet and pleasant, held just the right balance of friendliness and formality. She must be very used to acting a part to do it so well. I was a little taken aback, I suppose.

‘Shall we sit?’ said my dear old friend, smiling. ‘I’ve ordered champagne to celebrate.’

The last time I had drunk champagne was with her in front of her own fireplace, at Gore, but no hint of that meeting, no flicker of complicity crossed her face. I had to match her composure, but it cost me dearly. I was bursting to sing and dance. To celebrate not only the exam result, but our being here together.

‘And Carl won the sculpture prize!’ shouted Francesca. ‘We’re rich!’

Ann frowned a little at that. ‘I thought your boyfriend was Anton?’

‘Oh Mum,’ Francesca laughed too loudly – I think the champagne was having an instant effect – ‘I told you about Carl. Anton was ages ago.’

Ann rolled her eyes at me and we both laughed. I ordered a delicious beef stew with little potatoes rolled in butter; the others ate salads. A salad on a crisp spring day seems a complete waste of time to me, but we all enjoyed ourselves. By the time the champagne was finished, Ann and Francesca were sufficiently relaxed to forget their figures and order apple pie and cream along with me. A wonderful hour or two, there in the sun, camellias and rhododendrons blooming in a riot around us. Everyone happy. Calm before the storm.

Francesca told us about a scare she’d had a couple of days back. Coming back to her flat late, she thought a man was following her. She’d turned one way and then another but the man made the same turns.

‘I wasn’t really scared,’ she said, looking anxiously at us for approval, ‘I know how to look after myself. But it sort of gets to you, you know, and you stop being sensible.’

Ann spoke rather sharply. All her lightness gone in a flash. I could see how precious her daughter was. ‘What did he look like? Did you know him?’

‘Oh Mum,’ Francesca spread her hands – a light little shrug that I had seen Jeanie make many times in the past, ‘it was dark. Some sad old man in a raincoat. I think he was bald.’

‘Francesca, sweetheart,’ Ann spoke quickly, more terrified, I think, than her daughter, ‘you mustn’t go wandering around at night alone. Promise me.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Francesca laughed, all cheerful again. ‘I know Dunedin like the back of my hand. The centre is full of student squats. Carl lives upstairs in an empty old bank in Rattray Street. He sleeps in the bank vault can you imagine! I just ducked in there. Disappeared down the alley and slept there the night. That old man would have no idea where I went. Never saw him again.’

I praised her for her bravery and quick thinking, but Ann seemed quite thrown. She put her hand over her daughter’s and held it as if to guard her from evil.

‘Oh Mum,’ said Francesca, smiling at me, in a way apologising for her mother’s anxiety. ‘Don’t worry. I’m a big girl now.’

‘No you’re not. Not if you wander alone at night.’ She spoke too strongly. I thought it strange, and I think Francesca did too. Ann should have praised her daughter as I did.

The afternoon was a complete contrast to the morning’s light-hearted tour. It started well enough. Ann loved Francesca’s exhibit; was quite knowledgeable about processes and dyes and full of questions. She weaves herself it seems, and had an opinion on all the fabric designs. Francesca opened like a flower to her mother’s praise, and rattled on about her plans and ideas. All Ann’s anxiety disappeared while we were in that part of the exhibition.

But then, when it seemed that Carl’s installation was in a different part of town and that we must walk a few blocks, Ann dug her toes in.

‘You two go and see it. I need to get back home.’

Francesca sighed. ‘Come on Mum, it’s not far. You’ll be amazed.’ I think she was used to her mother’s sudden mood swings; used too, to persuading her out of them.

But this time Ann would not be persuaded. She pleaded the long drive back, the hungry donkeys, her own tiredness. None of it made much sense to me. She had come especially, after all, to spend time with her daughter. I began to suspect that Ann – Jeanie – had developed some kind of anxiety syndrome, perhaps caused by all this subterfuge. She seemed to have an exaggerated perception of a need for secrecy. Her actions were not quite rational. Neither Francesca nor I could jolly her into staying.

Ann gave her daughter a quick hug, pushed a little wad of dollar notes into her hand. ‘Bring your Carl out to the house. You’ll both need a break after all your work. Come out soon.’ She turned smiling to me. ‘It’s been so nice to meet you.’ And walked off quickly to her car.

She couldn’t get away quickly enough. That’s how it seemed.

Francesca felt it too. ‘Maybe school’s getting on top of her,’ she said. ‘She’s the one who needs a break. Carl and I’ll go out next week and pamper her.’

I had to wonder about her Carl when we arrived at his macabre installation. He’d set it in the disused cellar of the old distillery – a damp, dark place, which he had done his best to make even more sinister. Above the basement was a room designed, I suppose, to be a replica of a display of sweets. Boxes were laid out with sugary looking treats inside, but when you looked closer, the sweets were pink sugary rats dusted with icing sugar. Disgusting. Francesca was full of the hidden meaning, the skill of the execution, but I couldn’t get past the rats. They were so realistic.

Then down we went, down wet dark brick steps, to the basement. A rank mist hovered down there, very gothic. Cleverly engineered but not pleasant. I was reluctant to go further, and anyway the steps were difficult for someone of my size, but I persevered for Francesca’s sake. Suddenly she shrieked out and raced ahead of me. A body lay face down in a tank of some liquid from which rose this mist.

‘Carl, Carl!’ Francesca screamed. ‘Someone help!’ She turned an anguished face up to me. ‘Carl’s drowned.’ I hurried to help her. The basement seemed empty except for us. We both dragged at the dead weight of the body, getting thoroughly drenched in the process. Suddenly our body stirred, heaved and came grinning to life. Carl removed the breathing straw from his mouth and stood, dripping and triumphant, to face us.

‘Oh boy,’ he puffed. ‘That carbon dioxide mist is no fun to breathe.’

The stupid idiot. He could have really drowned breathing that stuff. Francesca was in floods of tears. ‘What do you want to do that for? I thought you were …’

‘Hey hey!’ Carl grinned sheepishly. He put a long arm around her and explained the significance of shock — how it can heighten awareness. As if we didn’t know! He was rather sweet in a gangly sort of way, but definitely macabre in his tastes.

He found a rag for Francesca’s tears and helped me brush water from my coat. I’m afraid the shock tactics had dampened my enthusiasm for his message, whatever that was. The exhibition was now taking second place to my concern over the effect of carbon dioxide on a good leather coat. He led us further in to the basement where dark shapes loomed – a strange, twisted distillery. Carl pointed to a fellow in the shadows who seemed to be inspecting the innards of one of the shafts. ‘I couldn’t shock him though,’ he laughed. He just thought I was a dummy and walked on past. I nearly did suffocate that time.’

Francesca looked over at the man. She grabbed at Carl’s dripping arm and whispered, ‘Don’t look now but I think it’s the man who was following me.’

‘I wouldn’t think so,’ he replied, peering. ‘He’s been down here for ages, inspecting the works. Quite a nice old fellow, asking all about me and my work. I think he might be a critic. He wanted to photograph me against that distilling tube. Come and meet him.’ He led his reluctant girlfriend deeper into the gloom. I stayed where I was, anxious to return to daylight and normality.

I heard his words though. Soft and pleasant, but I’ve heard that blank, calm tone before. It belongs to the clinically disturbed. No mistaking that.

‘How do you do, Francesca. I’ve been longing to meet you. Longing.’

‘I don’t think …’ she began, but he stepped close, peering into her eyes. He came too close, one hand reaching towards her face. She recoiled. Carl pulled her away, but the man turned quickly to stay close to her; spoke with quiet force.

‘Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to alarm you. I believe, you see, that I may be your father.’ He clung to her arm. I could see that it hurt from the way she dragged at it.

Carl looked over to me for help, his face a mask of dismay. I was fearful myself, surrounded by those dark shapes. A dead opossum swung inside a tube just above my head. Sound effects of bubbling and groaning murmured in the background. It would seem Carl had created the perfect scene for an assault. I thought for one quick moment that he had done just that; the whole scene another sinister gimmick. Carl’s anguished look put me right. This was real.

I used my voice as a weapon. ‘Excuse me,’ I boomed at full throttle, ’the lady does not want your attentions, sir.’

The roar echoed off the damp walls – surprisingly effective. The man reacted violently, jumped back as if he’d touched an electric wire. His nerves must have been stretched to breaking. I strode forward, trying to look confident and in charge. ‘Get her upstairs,’ I whispered to Carl, ‘and call the police. This man is mad.’

Carl hesitated, looking from me to the man. I thought he was suitably worried about me, but it turned out he feared the man might destroy his installation! I shoved Francesca in the right direction and the boy stumbled up behind her.

‘I’ll be back in a moment!’ he shouted from the top of the steps, ‘Don’t leave him alone!’

I stood facing the madman, blocking his way for a moment, intending to follow immediately; not worried, to be honest, about protecting the work.

We recognised each other at the same moment. He had lunged forward and sideways, trying to side-step my useful bulk, but, instead, crashing into a great copper pipe which boomed like a gong. Surrounded by clashing echoes we stood face to face. His look was one of hectic triumph. I suppose mine was quite the opposite.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, his face pale and glistening in the dim light, the sound effects moaning and hissing an accompaniment. ‘Yes. So I am right all along. Well then, Elena, Jeanie’s friend.’

I said nothing, trying to think what my reaction should be. Where it would all lead.

‘She’s my daughter, isn’t she?’ he whispered. ‘You and Jeanie have hidden her from me all these years. My own daughter.’

‘Stuart,’ I said as firmly as I could, praying that someone would come to rescue me from this quagmire, ‘she is not your daughter. Believe me. Not. Your. Daughter.’

‘How can you know that?’ He smiled his disbelief, a grimace which betrayed his uncertainty.

I tried to keep my voice level, to pierce the armour of his self-delusion. ‘That girl is in no way related to you. I know absolutely who her father is. Absolutely. You must stop pursuing Ann Hope and her daughter. You have no claim. Do you understand? You are not the father.’

‘I could be!’ His voice became truculent, his eyes intense. ‘You don’t know, you stupid cow, what went on between me and my wife.’

‘She is not your wife.’ But it was clear that I was making no impression; simply provoking his madness.

‘Get out of my way!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘You are keeping me from my daughter!’ He shoved at me hard. I fell against some piece of metal and again the gong sounded, clanging louder this time. Goodness knows what I destroyed.

He ran past me and up the steps into the arms of someone – a tutor maybe, or passer-by. I heard him protesting innocence, a case of mistaken identity, his voice suddenly calm and rational, the wretch.

‘I do apologise,’ he said. ‘I thought she was my daughter, you see. I’ve been searching for her mother, and thought I had found a link.’ A self-deprecating little laugh. I could have throttled the man, but was still struggling to disentangle myself from unmentionable bits and pieces.

Francesca’s uncertain voice echoed down the stairwell. ‘But you’re not … My father is Italian …’

With relief I heard a voice of authority. Carl must have raised a policeman. By then I had made it up those damn steps. My arm was hurting like hell, broken I suspected.

‘No, no,’ said Francesca, ‘it’s alright now. No I don’t want to lay a charge. All a mistake.’

‘Well I do,’ I said firmly. ‘This man has assaulted me.’

Stuart Roper shot me the most malignant look. In the ordinary daylight he seemed smaller, scruffier. His coat was stained. He needed a haircut. The policeman led him away. I could hear him patiently protesting innocence until he was out of earshot.

I rang Jeanie from hospital. The injury was not too serious; a clean break of the fibula. But I certainly made the most of it to the police. They said Stuart had some kind of record and were holding him while they checked.

Jeanie (I wasn’t going to call her Ann any more; she needed to acknowledge the truth now and so did my brother – for Francesca’s sake if not their own) listened to my story in silence. Left the silence hanging after I’d finished.

‘You knew about Stuart, didn’t you?’ I guessed.

Silence.

‘You have to tell Francesca, Jeanie. That wretched man is claiming to be her father. He could put doubts in her mind.’

Silence.

‘Jeanie, you’ve become too tied up in the lie. It’s damaging your life and it could damage Francesca’s. Surely it would be safer for her to know about her Samoan heritage?’

A groan down the line.

‘He’ll come back you know. If they let him out he’ll come back. I’ll do what I can, but the man is mad. Delusional. And able to disguise it. He is a danger to you and your daughter.’

I needed to be with her, to help her cut the ropes she had bound around herself, but I couldn’t drive and I had meetings scheduled in Wellington. And the matter of Teo.

‘This is what I plan to do,’ I told her. ‘Teo is in the country with his wife. She’s ill and is having tests. I’m going to talk to him.’

‘It’s no use,’ Jeanie said in a flat voice. ‘That would be no use.’

She was so negative! My friend had disappeared down some black hole of despair.

I tried to jolly her along. Teo was not a monster, I said. If he knew there was a threat to Francesca, he could surely be persuaded to make some kind of acknowledgement.

‘He wouldn’t,’ said Jeanie, her voice hardly audible. But did I detect a glimmer of hope?

‘Let me try at least,’ I said.

‘Alright,’ she whispered. ‘Thanks Elena.’ There was a pause and I heard that sort of sob, or groan again. ‘It’s all a big mess,’ she said. ‘Sorry to be so useless.’

That was better. I promised to keep in touch, and to try to see Teo in the next day or two.

‘We’ll sort it out,’ I said. ‘Remember the Women’s Committee play? We can manage anything together!’

She laughed a little at that I think.

‘What can Stuart really do?’ I asked. ‘If he comes around again with that paternity nonsense, you can always get a DNA test you know. That’d soon settle matters. Francesca has a Samoan father. I’d stake my reputation on it.’

She made a sort of gasp, which I hoped was laughter.

Poor old Jeanie. She’d been on her own too long. Time for my brother to take responsibility.

We walked in a little garden in the grounds of the clinic where Ma‘atoe was having treatment. The tests had proved positive. Teo looked drawn. He was fond of his wife. She was having a bad time, he said. The chemo affected her will to fight the disease, he said. It was worse for her, he thought, than for many of the palagi patients. I questioned him about the prognosis. It wasn’t good. She had let the lump go too long. And there were secondary tumours already appearing in other parts of her body.

‘She wants to come home,’ he said. ‘I doubt the treatment can do anything more than prolong her discomfort. Could you speak to the doctors?’

I promised to do that. Teo also wanted to know whether I had accepted the position in Apia. ‘If you were back home,’ he said, ’you could oversee matters. It would be a comfort to have family involved. She would like that, I know.’

I felt ashamed. I had always found it difficult to relate to Ma‘atoe. Though we had grown up in neighbouring villages and were both wedded to a love of Samoa, we lived, I suppose, at opposite extremes of fa‘asamoa. She believed too blindly in the rightness of the old ways, the missionary teachings; I perhaps wanted to rush change too quickly. We could have found common ground, no doubt, but I hadn’t tried very hard, and possibly neither had she. And now she was dying. Ma‘atoe had raised her children strictly but I had to admit they were turning out to be beautiful, well-grounded kids. Perhaps I resented too much her insistence that I should not introduce them to what she called my ‘palagi ways’.

If I could help her now, I should. I told Teo so.

He nodded rather gravely and smiled. Teo has become grave. What a contrast from the pushy, iconoclastic youth who returned with me to Samoa twenty odd years ago! He’s only forty for heaven’s sake but he speaks now like an elder, emphatically, and, when speaking English, with a strong island accent and idiom! He used to be so proud of his perfect New Zealand vowels! But he is, at least, forward thinking, and will influence the Fono in good ways I believe. Ma‘atoe has not managed to convert him completely!

We talked for a bit. He was full of enthusiasm for the Independence celebrations a month or two earlier. Our village had a very strong group of young fautasi oarsmen this year – two of the boys Teo’s sons. Our team won for the first time. The rowers, trained under Teo’s tutelage, streaked ahead of the opposition from the first shot of the pistol. The desire to watch them win had been the reason, he said sadly, that his wife had delayed coming for tests. She had jumped up and down on the shore as the boats raced towards the reef and shot through the gap, shouting and dancing with the other women from the village. It was her duty, she said, to remain and prepare the welcome feast. The truth was that she loved watching the fautasi race. The excitement of it. And now this dreadful time away from her family and her nu‘u.

‘I’ll talk to the doctors,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she can come home.’

‘Take the job,’ Teo said again, speaking with some force. ‘We need people like you, Elena. I hate to see our young flocking to the bright lights overseas. Come back.’

We sat on a bench under a young oak tree, its branches still bare. The rose bushes in the little plot beside us were beginning to put out tentative shoots. A small clump of spring daffodils were the only splash of colour. Elsewhere, the soil was bare. There’d been a frost. I thought of the riot of colour, the lush insistent growth tumbling over everything back in our village. Perhaps I would go back.

But first Jeanie and Francesca.

I took Teo’s hand. He returned the pressure, smiled and would have spoken, but I held up my plaster cast to still his words. ‘You remember Stuart Roper, Jeanie’s husband in Samoa.’ This was not a question; I knew he would remember Stuart. ‘He did this to me. Down in Dunedin. Last week.’

Teo looked at me warily. Last time we had spoken of Jeanie, he had walked away. I was determined he would not do so again. I gripped his hand.

‘Listen, Teo. That Stuart is not well at all. Seriously unhinged, I would say. Remember how he stalked Jeanie back then; before she disappeared?’

Teo nodded. All attention now.

‘Well he’s at it again. He’s discovered her somehow, and her daughter, Francesca.’

‘Francesca,’ he repeated, ‘An odd name.’ He was looking away, pretending a lack of interest, but I felt his hand stiffen under mine.

‘Odd, yes, for one with Samoan blood,’ I said. ‘She’s been brought up to think her dark looks are Italian.’

‘Samoan? Are you sure?’ he looked at me now. ‘How old is she, then?’

‘About the right age for you to be the father,’ I said. Then told him the story of Stuart stalking Francesca; accosting her and claiming to be her father.

Teo exclaimed and walked away a little. I prepared to follow – he wasn’t going to wriggle out this time – but he came back to me; sat again.

‘He claims to be her father?’

‘Yes, but you see, he can’t be, Teo. Her Samoan heritage is clear to me. It would be to you too.’

‘Jeanie had a bit of a Chinese look.’

‘Not Chinese. Samoan. I see a likeness, now and then, to your own children, Teo.’

He flinched, but I pressed on. I pointed out that if I could see it, others would in time. That Stuart was a very unstable man who thought that the child might be his; thought that Jeanie had run away, changed her name, because she didn’t want to share the child. I had been thinking about it all and could see how his mind worked. I had been away from Samoa when Jeanie disappeared but the gossip was still around when I returned. Stuart had refused to believe that she wanted a divorce; had insisted that they were still married. Francesca’s age could make him think he was the father.

‘I have advised Jeanie to get a DNA test,’ I said. ‘That would make the matter clear. There’s no way Stuart could be the father.’

Teo groaned. He actually groaned – the deep anguished sound a stag makes on a still night. ‘Elena, Elena!’

I felt bad, pressing him so hard, when he had the trouble with Ma‘atoe, but this was urgent I felt. Urgent for his daughter. And for Jeanie. ‘Just write to her,’ I urged. ‘Write to Jeanie accepting parentage. And enclose a letter for Francesca that Jeanie can show her at the right time.’

‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me. Not with Ma‘atoe so ill. It would distress her too much.’ His head hung down. He wouldn’t look at me. All the pompous gravity had gone.

I tried to tell him that Ma‘atoe didn’t need to know. Not now at least. Francesca and Jeanie were capable of keeping quiet for a while, until his wife recovered – I didn’t like to mention the alternative. I promised to explain the situation to them.

He smiled at me sadly. ‘You’ve always been the one to find solutions, sister. I’m not sure this one will work.’

I had a thought then. I think I knew what was bothering him. ‘That night of the palolo. You and Stuart had a fight, didn’t you? His injuries weren’t an accident?’

Teo looked at me, his mouth twisted.

I pressed on. ‘You’re afraid of this coming out? Of Stuart accusing you?’

At first he wouldn’t speak. Several times he went to begin but couldn’t find the words. Finally, he faced away from me and began to speak. The words were low and I had to crane to hear. It seemed somehow all the more horrifying to hear the story, here in the grounds of the hospital, so far away for home.

Teo told me that Stuart had discovered him and Jeanie ‘together’ as he put it on palolo night. In retaliation Stuart had sought out Ma‘atoe and tried to rape her. The wretch! Teo had found them in time and the two fought. Stuart had picked up a bush knife from one of the paopao but in the end it was Stuart who was wounded. Teo had threatened Stuart over the attempted rape. If the village found out, Stuart would likely be lynched.

‘Indeed,’ I agreed. ‘But why was Ma‘atoe alone? Where were the aualuma? They were to blame, surely!’

I began, then, to see the picture. To understand the pattern of guilt and shame that had kept the fight quiet. Also to understand why it would upset Ma‘atoe to discover Teo had fathered a child that night which must have been so frightening and shaming for her.

I laid my good hand on Teo’s shoulder. ‘Write to her at least. That might persuade her to talk to Francesca. The situation has become very messy.’

He gave a strangled little laugh. ‘You could say that!’

‘Teo! This is no laughing matter. I fear for both of them. Jeanie doesn’t seem able to escape her own inventions. And Stuart is a very real danger. You must help her.’

He sighed. ‘Give me her address. I’ll see what can be done.’ He looked at me with great seriousness – all the gravity of a matai back in his manner and voice. ‘But Ma‘atoe must not hear any word of this. Not a whisper, understand?’

I understood.

‘And you will take the job?’

Oho! I punched him, laughing, outraged that he should make that a condition. But he laughed and punched me back and we were brother and sister again. I said that I had told Jeanie he was a good man. That he would accept his responsibility.

He smiled, shaking his head. ‘Elena, you are impossible! Impossible, do you know that? Come back and learn to take life a little more slowly or you’ll wear us all out!’

It’s all very well for people to accuse me of being bossy (or mischievous, Hamish Lander would say) but some situations need to be managed and pushed along. I make no apology for interfering. None at all. It was time for the truth to come out.

Inside the clinic, I learned that Ma‘atoe could not survive long; that the chemo would probably prolong her life a little, but that it was quite possible for her to return to Samoa with palliative care only, if that was her choice. My poor sister-in-law looked so pale and sick. Her skin, once so glowing was now grey, hanging loose where her good comfortable bulk had shrunk. But when I told her what the doctor had said, her face lit up.

‘Let’s go home then, Elena,’ she whispered, holding my hand. ‘Will you come with me?’

I told her I would.

Ann / Jeanie

Ann sits at her desk in the little study off her bedroom. It’s her favourite place. She’s been sitting here for half an hour, she realises, without writing a word. Her best writing paper is laid out; the ink pen she favours for special notes. She can hear Fran singing along with the radio, busy in the kitchen downstairs. Carl has not come with her.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ Fran had said, waving her hands about in the Italian manner she has adopted since her trip overseas, ‘I can’t seem to settle with a boy. Is it me? Or them? I thought Carl was the one and then … tutto finito.’

Ann had hugged her too thin daughter, there at the bus stop and assured her she had plenty of time before she need worry about settling down.

‘Yes, but …’ Fran had shrugged and left the sentence unfinished.

Ann looks, now, west over the fields to where the first evening star has just appeared; the sky luminous above it. Sunlight still illuminates the tops, but the shadows are creeping up the slopes. It will be a cool night, despite the warm spring day. Random white shapes are still visible in the fields – Michael’s sheep still browsing on the new growth. Why is white so much more visible at dusk? And do the sheep eat deep into the night when no one watches? She looks back at the blank paper. The letter must be written. She must speak to Francesca. But it is all so hard. She should be feeling relief. Teo has offered a way out. But how can she begin to say the words?

And which words? Ann is terrified of Francesca’s reaction. Her daughter sometimes seems fragile in a way that Ann doesn’t want to explore. No doubt it is simply teenaged angst. But Ann has feared, from time to time, that the fragility might stem from some buried memory of her unwanted birth. Could a similar shadowy memory have been at the root of her father’s depressions? Surely not. Ann has read widely – secretly – on the subject of inherited and learned characteristics. She has watched Francesca with a hidden anxiety during the early years of her life, and then relaxed to see her daughter grow up an ordinary little girl with normal fears, normal bursts of pleasure. Fran is secure in the love of her mother. Ann cannot bear to shake that security. Will not. From her first days, Francesca has been loved. Surely that is what matters? Ann remembers the little bundle left on her doorstep back in Samoa. A haggard Teo had knocked on the door early one morning. His head hung down so she couldn’t see his eyes. He spoke no word, but indicated with one hand the basket at his feet. Before she could utter a word of protest he whispered ‘Fa‘afetai lava’ in a shamed voice, keeping his head bowed, and ran away.

The tiny baby looked out at the world with dark, unfocused eyes. She had a shock of dark hair; her skin was creamy. A lavalava made a nest for her in the basket and covered her lightly. Apart from that she was naked. Ann had lifted the basket gently. Inside the house, the baby took her proffered finger; gripped it as if life depended on that link.

Ann had been lost in love from that moment; could not contemplate severing the precious bond. That trust. Against all reason, all common-sense, she had determined to keep the baby. Until these last few weeks it had been a decision she’d been proud of. They’ve lived a good and true life together.

And now this letter from Teo. It sits in the drawer here, alongside one for Francesca. Ann smiles for a moment to think how Elena must have browbeaten Teo! And yet the letter seems genuine. She could ignore them both; would have but for the looming threat of Stuart. A note was waiting for Francesca when she arrived yesterday – a report from the police informing her that Stuart Roper had been released on bail, pending a court hearing. He was not considered a danger, the report stated; he had expressed regret for his mistaken behaviour and had agreed to return to Auckland.

‘Good riddance!’ Fran had shrugged, dismissing the matter. But before she ran upstairs to unpack, she gave her mother an odd little glance. A question in the air between them. Ann didn’t like to show her dismay. Perhaps the incident at the exhibition had persuaded Stuart to let the matter lie? Perhaps he had gone back to Auckland. If so, Ann and Francesca would be able to continue their old, comfortable life. Nothing need be said.

Ann takes out Teo’s letter and re-reads it. It is carefully worded – he hasn’t written my name, she thinks, because he is unsure what to write. 

Talofa lava,

Elena has persuaded me that it is my duty to take some action over your daughter. I speak honestly in saying that I did not realise that you had kept the child. I assumed you would have had her (Elena tells me she is a healthy and beautiful girl) adopted.

I feel ashamed that I have not acknowledged her, or assisted in her upbringing. There have been reasons as you will understand and which I have explained in the letter to Francesca. Please feel free to read her letter and know my words before you hand it to her. If you decide not to give it to her, I will understand completely and will never mention the matter again.

My wife Ma‘atoe is ill. They say she will die. I would not like this matter to come to her ears, in any way at all. She deserves a peaceful and dignified end to her too short life. I am returning to Samoa with her as soon as the doctors say she is fit to travel. Elena, I hope, will come with us.

If you think it is a wise idea – or necessary – for me to meet with your daughter I will do this. Please believe that I would like to see her. Later it may be possible to introduce her to her half-brothers and sisters in Samoa.

Thank you for raising her. I am sure you have been the best of mothers.

Soifua

Teo Levamanaia (I am titled now but I feel uncomfortable writing my new name on this document. Forgive me!)

P.S.The name Francesca! The most impossible word for a Samoan to pronounce. I see in it your understandable rejection of everything Samoan. In the future, if you and she wish, perhaps we may add a Samoan name?

Ann fingers the letter to Francesca, which she has read. It is all possible. All so careful. And yet she hesitates. Francesca believes in her Italian heritage. Ann is used to being Ann Hope.

Outside it is dark now. Peaceful. Ann loves this old house on the hill out in the country. She tries to imagine living another life and can’t. She is settled and valued at the school. Francesca loves coming home to this place. It’s home to both of them. For the time being I will say nothing. If it’s possible to stay this way, surely it will be best. For both of us.

A sharp image from Samoa invades her determination. These flashes are becoming more frequent. Elena and Stuart have unlocked her painstakingly erased past. Against the dark scene outside, she sees the brightly lit colour of sunlit water and kaleidoscopic fish – Palolo Deep. That beautiful underwater world teeming with tame fish wanting to nibble her fingers, take a little bread from her outstretched hand. She can feel again the perfection of floating there, watching until her fingers and toes turned white and wrinkled, the only sound the soft in and out of breath in her snorkel. The electric blue fish sharp as the tiny flame of a blow torch; the striped yellow and black clowns, flat as a painted cut-out, slipping upright through the water to nibble at fronds waving in the coral; the shoals of silver fish, escaping a single sinister barracouta, their synchronised movement an outrageously beautiful choreography. The blue luminous tips of the branching coral. So brilliant. So beautiful.

So unlike that other palolo, the dark night in the lagoon.

She stands, with the letters in her hand, suddenly filled with fear. This will never go away. Damn Elena. Damn, damn, damn Stuart.

She puts the letters back in the drawer. Below Francesca has stopped singing. The comfortable kitchen noises are silent. The meal must be ready. A morepork in the tree outside hoots. Ann leaves the letters in the drawer and goes downstairs.

She sees Francesca sitting silent and still, her profile just visible in the lamplight, her back to the stairs. Her stomach lurches to see Stuart, sitting in shadow opposite her, facing them both. A gun in his hand. Not his old rifle, but a pistol, stubby and sinister. He raises it slowly as she cries out and stumbles down the last steps towards her daughter.

‘Sit there,’ he says, his voice level, almost conversational, ‘where I can see you both.’ He holds the gun steady, pointing at Francesca.

Ann sinks slowly, slowly, into her comfortable old chair, which accepts her now as a prisoner. She looks from Stuart to her daughter and back again.

‘Mum …’ says Francesca.

But he waves the gun at her and her voice dies.

‘I will do the talking tonight,’ he says.

Ann sends her daughter a tight little smile of encouragement, but her heart is failing. Will it all end like this?

Stuart has dressed smartly this time. In his shadowy corner his white shirt and blood-red tie glow. The golden light from the lamp highlights the curve of his cheek. He is freshly shaved. He could almost be handsome.

‘I’m sorry about the gun,’ he says quietly. ‘It seemed necessary after last time. I will shoot the dogs if they come.’

Francesca looks at her mother. Her eyes ask the question. What’s happening? He has been here already?

Ann makes a tiny movement of her hand. Keep still; be patient.

Stuart rests his gun hand on the arm of his chair. Ann can see that the weight of it bothers him. He has only one useful hand. That might be an advantage to them.

Sweat sheens Stuart’s face and yet the room is chill. His breathing is quick – almost panting. Jeanie looks at him for clues. Is he truly mad, or simply trying to frighten them?

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Jeanie,’ he says. ‘We just need some honest answers, Francesca and me. Don’t we?’

Ann remembers times in the past when he used that light brittle voice before he hit her. She braces ready to take whatever comes. But not death – surely it won’t be that?

Stuart suddenly flashes a bright smile at Francesca who flinches as if struck. ‘Stay still!’ he shouts. ‘Didn’t I say be still?’ Into the silence that follows he speaks to Francesca proudly, making normal conversation it would seem. ‘Your father’s a very good shot, aren’t I Jeanie? I’ve always had a good eye. Shall I show you? That pot on the top shelf.’ He takes a quick aim. The explosion is impossibly loud in the confined room. Breath is sucked from Jeanie’s chest as if a tornado has struck. Francesca screams. A shower of pottery shards lash down, one drawing blood on Ann’s cheek. She feels the blood welling.

Stuart laughs like a child with pleasure as the two women mop at themselves, brush away fragments. ‘Bull’s eye!’ he says. ’Did you see that?’

Ann frowns quickly at her daughter: He’s mad; we must be very careful. Francesca’s nod is infinitesimal, agonised, but alert. Ann is proud of her.

For several minutes nothing happens. Stuart’s eyes travel slowly back and forward between the two women. He seems to be talking to himself; he nods quickly several times, strange expressions pass across his face. Yes, he is mad.

Outside it is night. Ann wonders if Michael might pop in. Sometimes he comes. But his arrival might be more dangerous for them all. She clears her throat. In the silence it sounds to her like thunder.

‘Something’s burning,’ Francesca says in a tiny voice.

Ann can smell it too; something burning in the kitchen. Perhaps she can ring Michael from there?

‘The dinner’s burning,’ she says trying to keep the words steady. ‘Could I just go and turn it off?’

He thinks about this. ‘We could have dinner together later, couldn’t we?’

Ann nods.

‘What’s for dinner?’ His tone is conversational again.

‘Spaghetti Bolognaise,’ says Francesca.

‘I don’t like spaghetti. Could we have potatoes?’

‘No,’ says Francesca quickly, then looks in horror at her mother as Stuart raises the gun. ‘Yes,’ she says.

‘With veges?’

Ann can not believe they are having this conversation.

‘Yes, cabbage. That’s what’s burning.’

‘Well we’d better not let it burn. Not you!’ as Francesca begins to rise. He nods at Ann. ‘Go and turn it off, but leave the door open.’ He stands, holding the gun pointed at Fran’s head.

Fran catches her eye. Hope in that quick glance.

But Ann finds she can’t risk the phone. Stuart is watching her, his eyes darting back and forth between the two women. Ann dumps the burning pan in the sink. Her shaking hands can scarcely turn the tap. Cold water suddenly spurts and the gun jerks in Stuart’s hand. She can’t think what to do. Her thoughts are only for Francesca. She’s wasting an opportunity but all she can think of is her own panic. It’s not true your nerves turn to ice in real danger. You turn to jelly.

‘Back here,’ shouts Stuart. ‘Back in here quick!’

She sits down again, her legs trembling, ashamed of her inaction. Francesca swallows. She’s very pale.

Stuart keeps his eyes on Francesca, but the words are addressed to Ann. ‘Tell her who I am.’

‘You are Stuart Roper.’

‘Tell her.’ He raises the gun.

Ann takes a breath. Looks steadily at her daughter. ‘A long time ago I was married to him.’

Francesca makes a small sound. Her eyes move wildly. Ann thinks her daughter might faint.

‘You are still married to me.’

‘No, Stuart. You might like to think so, but no.’

He points the gun at Francesca and Ann cries out. ‘For pity’s sake, Stuart, leave her! She has nothing to do with you. Nothing!’

Stuart grins. Holds up the stump of his hand. ‘Not true. Tell her. Tell her who you are. How I got this! Go on tell her.’ His voice full of an insane excitement.

He’s not in any way rational. There’s no way he would want anyone to know how or why his hand was severed. Ann wonders what story he tells himself; what justification he has made up for himself.

‘Tell her,’ says Stuart, quieter now, triumphant it would seem, ‘and then we’ll have dinner together.’

‘Francesca,’ says Ann, looking steadily at her daughter, shrugging slightly as if to say I am humouring him; you don’t have to believe it, ‘I was married to this man for four years, before you were born. My name then was Ann Jeanie Roper.’

Stuart nods, approving. ‘Go on, go on.’

‘For almost two of those years we lived in Samoa with my father, John O’Dowd, who died there.’

‘Leave out O’Dowd,’ says Stuart. There’s a strange wild excitement now in his voice. Jeanie is fearful of it. ‘O’Dowd’s not important.’

Jeanie feels sobs rising. This is all wrong. She must be in control. She must say the words right. Francesca is watching her, every muscle rigid with fear. Fear of the gun, or of what she might hear?

‘My father is important to me, and part of the story,’ she chokes out.

Stuart stands. The gun wavers in his one good hand. Francesca screams. Awkwardly, Stuart drags the stump of his wrist over the light switch, flooding the room with light from the big overhead lamp. ‘A bright light for the truth,’ he says almost jauntily. In the harsh light, the room, the people in it, now appear drained, cardboard people in an amateurish play. This big light is never switched on at night. The room looks alien, heartless. Ann hates it; wants irrationally to rush over and turn off the switch.

Stuart takes a step towards her, lashes out with a shoe and grunts with satisfaction to hear the crack on her shin, Jeanie’s painful, indrawn breath. ‘Just tell about me. About her father.’ He sits again, the gun held level and still.

She could have jumped him then. They both could have, but didn’t. Jeanie begins to fear that they won’t survive. But she simply can not speak what Stuart wants to hear.

Jeanie tries to keep the shaking out of her voice. Tries to speak only to Francesca. ‘A man called Teo Levamanaia – a Samoan – attacked Stuart one night. This man – she nods quickly towards Stuart – saw me with Teo. We had a sort of affair and Stuart caught us. He started a fight and was hurt by Teo.’

Stuart nods; he seems to accept this shortened version. He waves his wrist stump at his deformed and rosy ear. ‘That’s what the man did.’

Does he expect pity from Francesca? Has he wiped all knowledge of his own rape? Jeanie hopes desperately that he has.

‘When I discovered that I was pregnant with Teo’s child,’ she says, telling it simply as if to a child. ‘I ran away. I didn’t want to live with Stuart. Or Teo. I was angry with them both, Francesca, I wanted nothing to do with Samoa or my husband. And so I hid my identity. And yours. I hid the truth from you.’

Francesca looks at her in some anguish. Jeanie can see she doesn’t know how to react; doesn’t really believe this story.

‘You are part Samoan, Fran,’ she says, intently, willing that part of the truth to be accepted by Francesca, ‘not Italian. I’m sorry now, that I told you another story.’

Francesca looks at Jeanie warily. ‘Not Italian? You made that up?’

‘At the time I needed desperately to escape this man. He would not understand that I no longer loved him.’

‘Mum!’ Francesca suddenly believes it; is outraged. ‘I’m not Italian at all?’

Ann swallows. ‘Yes, my dear daughter. Elena recognised it immediately. Your Samoan blood. She’s your aunt.’

They have both forgotten the man with the gun. Stuart clears his throat. They jump at the sound. Turn to look at him.

Stuart is breathing quickly – shallow panting sounds coming from his mouth. Sweat drips off his chin. The excitement has faded from his eyes. The long sad mooing sound he makes could have reached them from the farm outside. His hand trembles. ‘That’s not right. That’s not it, Jeanie.’ There is desperation in his rushing words. ‘That fellow in Samoa … Giles Something … he told me you were pregnant when you ran away. You didn’t want to share her with me, did you? All these years I’ve known I had a child somewhere. I knew it. In my bones I could feel her there, waiting for me. She’s my daughter isn’t she? Ours?’

Jeanie hopes the relief in hearing that one word — ours – doesn’t show. He doesn’t suspect. Perhaps he doesn’t even remember that night.

‘Look at her, Stuart; look closely. Her dark skin; the wide dark eyes. They are not yours.’

Stuart shakes his head back and forth, back and forth as if an insect is bothering him. ‘No …’ he grates out. ‘Not …’ He rises then, slowly, unwillingly it seems, to peer intently at Francesca. She moans a little but submits to the scrutiny, holding herself rigid but leaning back as far as she may from the madness of that peering face.

‘You can see it Stuart, can’t you,’ says Jeanie gently. ‘Look at my fair skin; I’ve always been pale. You are even fairer, your hair was reddish, your eyes blue. She’s not yours. Please believe this.’

His high excitement is sinking. Jeanie can almost see the energy drain from him. He has gone very pale. Will he be more dangerous or less if he believes her?

‘Jeanie,’ he says, ‘Jeanie.’ He might be about to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, speaking as if he were a child. ‘You have made a mistake, Stuart. You are not the father. And we are no longer married. All that was long, long ago. Are you hungry? Shall we have dinner now?’ If he eats, he must put the gun down.

His eyes are suddenly crafty. ‘But we are married,’ he cries. ‘Don’t you see? You never signed any divorce. You have lived with a different name. That will surely make a difference. We can live together again! I can be a good father to her!’

He watches her carefully.

Oh God will this never end? ‘Let’s have dinner,’ she says again. ‘You must be hungry.’

Suddenly he sinks back into the chair, the gun resting on his knee. ‘You’re humouring me. I’m not a child.’ His voice is tired, his eyes blank. ‘I’ve come all this way. I’ve made a big effort, Jeanie, can’t you see that? And now you say you don’t want me after all. That’s hardly polite.’ He sighs. ‘Yes, let’s have dinner.’ He waves the gun at Francesca, who dashes for the kitchen. Pots clatter. Jeanie thinks Francesca will try to ring Michael and speaks to drown any sound.

‘What have you been doing all these years, Stuart?’

‘Oh, this and that. Nothing important. I’ve been searching for you.’ He looks away. ‘She’s not my daughter after all. I see that now. I thought she might make things right between us, do you see?’ Then stands slowly, sluggishly. ‘Where is that man? With the dogs?’

‘Outside.’

‘You tried to fool me. He’s not your husband. I checked up.’

Jeanie watches every movement. Something different is happening. The gun keeps drifting towards the floor. It seems that even the small movement of holding it level is too much effort. His eyelids droop until only a slit of pale blue iris shows.

‘You shouldn’t have left like that, Jeanie,’ he says, his words dragging, slurring. He could almost be falling asleep on his feet. ‘It wasn’t fair. You never gave me a chance.’

Can he be drunk? Jeanie tenses, ready to grab at the gun, but he raises it slowly again as if it is a great weight.

‘Jeanie,’ he says again, ‘Jeanie.’ He turns the gun gently, puts it in his mouth and, looking sleepily, sadly at her, pulls the trigger.

The concussion sends him backwards into the wall and then sliding to the floor. Francesca screams, rushes into the room. Jeanie is already on her knees beside him, holding the mangled head, trying to find some words of comfort. She moans out loud at what she sees. Even in this final demonstration Stuart has failed to act cleanly. The bullet has passed through the mouth and neck, but missed the brain. Blood spurts out onto the carpet, but he is still conscious.

‘Jesus, Stuart!’ Jeanie cannot feel sorry for him – feels the old horror just touching the clammy skin. Is she going to have to save him? Surely, after all this, she can leave him to bleed? Francesca stands in the doorway, watching. Is she thinking the same?

But of course she can’t leave him bleeding. ‘Call the ambulance, Fran,’ she shouts angrily, ‘then call Michael!’ Jeanie is furious. Angry that he is still alive; angry that she must try to save his life – someone who she has so often willed dead. But she must. Savagely, she applies pressure to the wound. Stuffs the table cloth hard against the pumping blood. Surely, please God, he will die, anyway, now, quickly, before the ambulance arrives. Die here on my carpet, the poor silly wretch.

‘Michael’s on his way.’ Francesca is already dialling the ambulance. And the police.

‘Jeanie?’ whispers Stuart, dribbling blood. He seems to be smiling. Some of the old triumph back in the faint words. ‘There you are.’

Jeanie nods. ‘Yes.’ She clenches her teeth to hold back the curses she would rather spit out. She presses hard, angrily, against the flow of blood. Against the ebbing life.

Stuart’s eyes are rolling. He will be unconscious shortly. ‘You can’t leave me now,’ he whispers. ‘You’re stuck with me.’

Jeanie says nothing. Keeps up the pressure. After a minute or two she sees that he will not survive. Relief brings some gentleness to her voice.

‘Poor Stuart,’ she whispers. ‘Poor, sad man. You can rest now.’

Does he smile, or has he gone already?

Jeanie lets him lie where he has died on her carpet and goes to her daughter, who has been standing in the doorway all this time. They look at each other wordlessly. Jeanie cannot touch her – will not allow his blood to touch Francesca. She goes into the kitchen and lets the cold water rinse it from her hands, her arms. She watches the rosy bloom of it mingle with burnt cabbage, overflow the pot and run away. Then she is free to hold her trembling daughter; to lead her to the table and seat her quietly.

Michael and the baying dogs arrive to find the two women sitting exhausted and silent at the table, waiting for life to begin again.

Next day, after the police and the questions are over, Jeanie and her daughter sit side by side in the sun on the wooden bench by the front door. Jeanie takes a deep breath. This is going to be the hard part. Far more difficult than answering police questions. But before she can say a word, Francesca suddenly sweeps her hand sideways, knocking her mug of coffee to the ground. It shatters on the bricks, but neither woman bends to pick up the pieces.

‘How could you?’ shouts Francesca. ‘My own mother! How could you lie like that?’ She jumps to her feet, her face blotched, fury in every movement. ‘All these years – all my whole life – you were really someone else! You aren’t Ann Hope at all!’

Jeanie shows her daughter her two hands, palm up. ‘I am Ann Hope, Fran. I was Jeanie Roper. What do names matter? The hands that held you as a baby, fed you and raised you, were Ann Hope’s hands. Your mother’s hands.’

‘Oh!’ Francesca isn’t going to give in so easily. ‘How will I ever know whether you’re lying or telling the truth? How can I ever trust your words again?’

She flings her arms up in the air – one of her Italian gestures – and flounces down the path to the donkey paddock. Jeanie watches her go, smiling hopefully to herself at the dramatics. Fran is enjoying her anger; surely that’s a good sign?

But as she sits watching the treacherously peaceful scene – the lazy hills, the slow-moving cloud shadows patterning the paddocks below – doubt and guilt spread through her body like a cancer. Has she been wrong all along to hide the truth? What of this new ‘truth’ which Francesca now believes but which is also a lie? Jeanie feels the weight of these stories – these many layers – as something physical, pressing her downwards until she might suffocate beneath them.

She straightens her shoulders; watches her daughter. Her daughter. Francesca was never Stuart’s. Yet she hears again Stuart’s desperate voice claiming fatherhood, and wonders if the truth might have changed him. Rescued him?

Jeanie scratches at a patch of moss, growing where the wood of the seat has split in the sun. She works at the tiny growth until the wood is clean and the pieces of brilliant green lie in the palm of her hand. She brings them to her face to breathe in the dark earthy smell. I have rescued Francesca, she thinks, I must hold on to that good thought. Francesca is the one I must always consider. Not Stuart. Never again Stuart. She sighs. But it is all suddenly so complicated. She squints into the sun, watching her daughter’s pacing.

An hour later Fran is still there, down with the donkeys, one arm over a patient grey back, scratching ears, no doubt berating her mother to the understanding beasts. Every now and then Fran glances up the hill to see if Jeanie is still there.

Jeanie waits, aching for her. Wants to hold her tight, but respects Francesca’s need to come to terms quietly with all this new and startling information. She shifts the pieces of mug into a pile with the toe of her shoe, but will not go inside to find a pan. She waits.

At last Francesca stamps her way up the hill again and flops onto the bench. She seems calmer. Jeanie smiles, pats her daughter’s arm.

‘I think you should read this,’ she says, handing her Teo’s letter.

‘What? Not more revelations? Give me a break.’

‘It’s from your father.’

Francesca looks quickly at her mother, then down at the paper. ‘Have you read it?’

‘Yes,’ says Jeanie. ‘It came with a letter to me, which you can see too if you like.’

Fran takes it and turns away to read. After a quick skim she reads it out aloud. 

Dear Daughter,

It is up to your mother whether she shows you this letter. I do not deserve to play any part in your life, and yet I would like to, now that my sister has discovered you. I did not know where you were.

The night when you were conceived, your mother and I were very close. It was a special and beautiful night in Samoa, the night of tapalolo. I was young and rather foolish in those days but your mother was very attractive – and perhaps a little foolish too. Her husband discovered us and in retaliation raped the woman whom I was about to marry and who has been my wife since that time. In my anger I attacked him, hurting him severely.

‘God!’ says Francesca. ‘Is this true?’ Jeanie nods and Francesca continues.

Fa‘asamoa is very strict about these matters. If the truth came out my wife would have been greatly shamed and Stuart and I both punished by law. We covered up the incident. Even now it would be serious for me and for Stuart if the incident were revealed. And my wife would be very distressed.

By the time your mother knew of the pregnancy, I was married and she had broken with her husband. She disappeared suddenly, angry perhaps with both me and her husband who pestered her shamelessly. I chose not to search for her or for you. I am sorry for this.

My wife is dying. She still remembers the night of the palolo rising as one of horror and shame. I do not want to disturb her last months with uncomfortable memories. Will you please respect her – and me – for this sad time in our lives?

I too remember that night with horror, but also with a sweetness which is to do with your mother. Elena tells me you have grown up good and beautiful, and that you are unmistakably of our family. She seems to know these things.

I acknowledge that you carry the ancient blood of our family. You have three half-sisters and two half-brothers living in Samoa who would, I believe, be happy to meet you in due time, and to introduce you to our ways.

If you and your mother would like to meet me in New Zealand before we leave, it could be arranged privately. Elena would manage it – as she manages everything else!

Soifua

Teo Levamanaia 

Francesca stumbles over the Samoan words, then tries again. She looks at her mother severely. ‘You told me a whole bunch of lies!’

‘I did – I’m so sorry dear. It seemed the right thing, and then somehow I got into the habit of it.’

‘All that stuff about the handsome Italian!’

Jeanie smiles sheepishly. ‘That happened to Elena – sort of.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘She saw your exhibition by chance, and recognised the old mill you painted. Then the attendant gossiped about your Italian father and she knew who I must be. That’s how she found me. Elena told me that Italian story, back in Samoa.’

‘Mum, you are outrageous!’

Jeanie is relieved to see her daughter’s rather admiring smile.

‘How could you send me to Italy on that wild goose chase?’

Jeanie feels a little of her old spirit rising. She’s had enough of apologising.’ You were very keen to go,’ she points out. ‘I think it’s good to have a mission when you’re travelling.’ She risks a grin. ’You enjoyed it didn’t you?’

‘That’s not the point!’ But Francesca can’t keep up the severity. She giggles. ‘My God, Mum, what a story! It’s like out of a book. So you had an affair?’

Jeanie looks sideways at her daughter. ‘He was very nice. A rather wild young man. Very handsome and a terrible flirt. Elena says he’s settled down now and has become quite pompous.’

Francesca frowns. ‘Pompous? He is not. I think he sounds lovely. Look at the way he’s invited me to meet my brothers and sisters.’

Jeanie is amazed at her daughter’s readiness to move on. Already she’s defending him – has accepted him and his family. Francesca is happily planning to meet a new family, while Jeanie is still shaking from last night’s terrors.

‘Anyway,’ says Francesca, squinting into the sun, ‘I was sick of all that Italian stuff. Look at how my work has changed this year. I expect I felt instinctively that I had Samoan blood. Do you reckon?’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘Genes have to count for something, don’t they?’ Francesca puts down her mug and turns, smiling, to hug her mother. ‘I’m rather glad you gave me a Samoan dad. Wait till they hear at school!’

‘Your father asked you to keep it quiet for a bit, remember?’

‘Oh yes.’ Francesca shrugs as if this request is not too important. ‘But that awful creep last night, Mum. Whatever made you marry him? I can’t believe it! What a basket case.’ She shudders.

Jeanie can think of nothing to say.

‘I suppose it’ll be all over the papers,’ says Francesca. ‘That can’t be kept quiet. Am I allowed to talk about that then?’

‘It’ll be a news item I expect. Poor Stuart would rather have enjoyed making the news.’ Jeanie rubs at her painfully bruised shin. ‘I’d rather not talk about him just now. Maybe one day.’

‘Poor Mum.’ Fran takes a mouthful of cake. ‘Shall we go and meet my new dad then? What’s Samoan for hello?’

‘Talofa lava.’

‘God, you remember!’

Elena stands at the door of her Wellington home, her arms spread wide in welcome. ‘Talofa! Talofa lava! Welcome my dear friends!’ Her large body is clad in a striking puletasi, a simple navy lavalava overlaid by a dress of patterned blue and white flowers. Tucked into her ear a spray of red geraniums. She dances down the few steps of her little Wellington house, to engulf Jeanie and Francesca in a bone-crushing hug. She steps back to wipe tears from her eyes. ‘Jeanie,’ she says more quietly. ‘My dear Jeanie, what a time you have had. We will talk quietly later, I promise.’ Then, raising her voice again, ‘But come in, come in! My new family!’

There is such pride, such a transparent joy in her words!

Jeanie holds back for a moment as Elena draws Francesca up the steps and into the house. Already she is fearful of the new possibilities. Her life is moving too fast. After years of living quietly on Stewart Island, and then in Gore, she has become unused to change. The two weeks since Stuart’s death have been crammed, day after day, with one new experience after another. Journalists, a TV crew, the police, arranging time off school, having to think all the time what to say, what to leave out. Fran has taken to all the attention naturally and with gusto; has managed to avoid any mention of her Samoan parentage, while rather milking the drama of the suicide for the benefit of friends and the general public. Jeanie needs time now on her own, doing nothing. Letting her changed life settle into its own rhythm. To be honest she would rather not have this meeting just yet, but Fran is so excited, Elena so insistent.

Jeanie walks slowly into this narrow little cottage, which Elena is in the process of leaving. She hears lively conversation down the hall; exclamations, introductions. Music is playing – something with an island flavour. Jeanie recognises the hip hop sound of a CD Elena has given Francesca. A new Samoan band called The Mau. It feels too cheerful, too celebratory. Already Jeanie is longing for home. She sees piled plates waiting in the kitchen. Surely Elena hasn’t arranged a big party for this delicate – this difficult – meeting? She feels her legs trembling; wants to turn around and walk away but forces her feet one after the other down the hall.

She stands in the doorway. Though the rest of the house is like any other suburban home, this room is Samoan. It is bare of furniture, the floor covered in woven palm matting. Bright cushions are scattered and every inch of space on the walls is taken up with tapa cloth hangings, bright flowery lavalava, photographs, festoons of shell lei, artificial flower lei, even lei made from sweets, strung in line. An enormous potted palm stands in one corner. It too is festooned with lei, so that it seems to be flowering. The whole effect is so bright, so relentlessly cheerful that Jeanie, for a moment, can hardly bear it.

The others are already seated on the floor. Elena is talking and laughing, telling the story, again, of how she found Jeanie. An old lady sits on a pile of cushions. The man must be Teo. He looks at her steadily for a moment. Then, with a small, uncertain smile, he motions her to come in and sit down.

Jeanie is glad of his formality. She takes two or three steps into the riotous room and then her legs fold. She sits a little distance from Teo; nods at him. He seems just as tongue-tied as she is. All they can manage is a smile.

Elena makes up for them all. ‘Such an occasion! What do you think, Jeanie? My brother has grown fat and too serious? And this lovely Francesca. So now I can call you niece!’

Teo shakes his head, gravely, and Elena quietens. Jeanie thinks that Elena, who is usually a shrewd reader of mood and atmosphere, is just as nervous as the rest of them.

‘Thank you, Teo, for your letter,’ says Jeanie at last. ‘Or should I call you by your title?’

He shakes his head. ‘In this room, Teo will do. It’s I who should thank you.’ He looks at Francesca quickly and then away again. Jeanie knows what he’s looking for. ‘You have a lovely daughter,’ he says. ‘It’s good to meet her.’

Francesca looks from one to the other, grinning. No doubt inventing romantic stories, past and future.

‘How is your wife?’ asks Jeanie.

‘Not well. A little better. Thank you. It has been a very hard time. We can travel in a few days. Did Elena say she’s coming with us?’

Jeanie nods. Elena has taken the position in the hospital; has urged Jeanie to think about returning to Apia to work with her there. Jeanie has been noncommittal. It’s too early to plan. At the moment all she can think of is her quiet home in Gore, her donkeys, the children she teaches.

Francesca turns to Teo, a little shy, catching his grave mood, but bursting with questions. ‘Tell me about your other children. Are they like me? Do you have photos? Will they want to meet me do you think?’

‘Ue, lots of questions!’ He smiles at her, painfully it seems to Jeanie. ‘In a while you will surely meet them. Not yet. They have enough to deal with now; their mother coming home. Her dying.’ He gestures to a photograph on the wall. ‘There they are.’

‘Oh! I didn’t see it!’ Francesca stands to examine the big framed photo just above her head. She turns back to Jeanie in delight. ‘Look, Mum! This one is like me. Don’t you think?’ And then to Teo, rather hesitant after the talk of death, ‘Am I allowed to know their names?’

Jeanie draws in a shaky breath. It’s all too much.

The white-haired old lady rises creakily from her pile of cushions. Jeanie realises with a shock that this is Simone. For a moment she panics. Is Hamish here too? How can she juggle all the different versions of the truth? The different understandings?

Old Simone seems to understand something of her confusion. She takes Jeanie’s arm in a companionable way, smiling but saying nothing, then steers her out of the room and down the corridor. She must be over eighty, but her step is firm, her body tall and upright. They walk together outside into a pocket-sized garden at the back of the house. It’s quiet there in the brisk morning sun; the sound of traffic is distant. A blackbird sings somewhere close by.

Simone plucks a dead head or two from the little flowering kowhai bush. ‘Jeanie, chérie,’ she says, ‘it’s so wonderful to see you.’ She seems quieter than Jeanie remembers, but, apart from that, no older than she looked twenty years ago. ‘Shall we leave those Samoans together for a moment? This is not an easy time for you, yes?’

Jeanie finds herself crying. The tears pour down her face. Great sobs heave upwards, shaking her body.

‘Oh dear,’ she gasps, helpless to stop the earthquake within. ‘I didn’t want this.’

Simone hands her a handkerchief. ‘My dear, this is natural. I expected such a thing. Come. We’ll sit here for a while.’

There’s a little wooden bench, just like her one at home, set under a tree. They sit side by side, watching a cheeky blackbird pecking at the patch of grass at their feet. From time to time Simone reaches a freckled, bony hand to pat Jeanie’s knee. She says nothing for a while then begins quietly.

‘Elena asked us – Hamish and I – to come and share her triumphant surprise. That woman! Not always so sensitive. But she has found you and that is very, very good. Perhaps you needed to be found?’ She looks shrewdly at Jeanie, ‘Perhaps at the moment you think not. But we all need our past, no? It must have been difficult to disappear so thoroughly; to say goodbye to all that life, as you have done?’

Jeanie’s sobs are diminishing slowly, but the eyes still leak. She nods, shakes her head; nods again, unable to speak.

‘Hamish, by the way, has not come. He said to send his love, but he thought that I would be more than enough on my own! That rude man.’

Jeanie nods, glad of Hamish’s kindness. She could not have coped with him as well. His knowledge.

‘So. You are found and Stuart is dead. We read the news – so horrible. Even in death he could not leave you alone. The papers made a small story of it. I can imagine much, much more, you poor soul.’

She takes from her purse an envelope and hands it to her. ‘Hamish asked that you have this.’ She hesitates, fingering the envelope, then bursts out, ‘Jeanie, I can feel that inside is a key. Tell me because my Hamish is tighter than a clam – is this by any chance the key to your old house in Apia?’

Jeanie smiles at Simone’s obvious curiosity. ‘I expect it will be.’

Simone cries out. ‘So! That man has known where you are all this time? Has looked after your affairs?’ Her French accent blossoms in her mock fury. ‘Wait till I confront that wretch my husband!’

‘He didn’t know, Simone, don’t be angry with him. He knew my bank account in Wellington, that’s all. He’s looked after the house.’

‘And ours too! Jeanie my darling, we are still neighbours in Samoa! While we still live, of course.’ She frowns for a moment looking at her wrinkled hands.

Jeanie suddenly feels such warmth towards this old friend. ‘Hamish has been very kind. I needed him to be discreet.’

‘But from me! No, I could have looked after you too! You must have longed for good friends.’

Jeanie smiles. ‘Yes, yes I suppose I did. At first. I suppose I have always wanted to ask a friend if I was doing the right thing.’ She looks quickly at Simone, afraid that she has said too much. Simone looks closely at her; nods as if in response to something she has discovered. Jeanie’s heart lurches to think what this formidable old lady might say next.

‘I hope you have treasured still a few good memories of those dear islands?’

‘Yes,’ Jeanie says quietly, surprising herself. ‘I thought I had managed to bury them, but recently they have returned. The smell of frangipani blossoms!’

Simone chuckles. ‘And of scented coconut oil on handsome brown bodies! Oh chérie, if only I was young again!’

‘And palusami fresh from the umu.’

‘Palusami!’ Simone cries. ‘Don’t torture me. I have tried every way to make it here. It’s not the same.’ After a moment she adds. ‘And beautiful Palolo Deep.’

Jeanie nods, thinking of that other palolo.

‘You will go back one day,’ says Simone. ‘That is for the future, perhaps. For the present – food. You must build your strength, for all that will come. Elena has prepared enough for an army, and I myself have brought some good healthy things from our garden. Shall we go in now?’

As they climb the steps to the house Simone says, ‘That Teo – such a wild young boy – and now so different, so serious. Hamish says he is a good leader for Samoa. We will see how he manages a new daughter. You mustn’t let him and Elena engulf her.’

Jeanie smiles at last. ‘She’s quite strong willed. I think Fran will manage to choose her own way.’

‘Good.’ Simone stops to kiss Jeanie lightly on her cheek. ‘Just like her mother.’

… ‘But surely,’ Jeanie continued, ‘in some circumstances, the truth would be too painful?’

‘Life is painful,’ Aunt Mary answered, a little sharply. ‘Best get to know that early.’

Jeanie couldn’t leave the argument; wanted to, but found the words had a will of their own. The need for absolution rose like a bubble through all her long-held repressions. ‘What if it had been true, Aunt Mary? What if Dad’s birth was the result of rape and violence? Wouldn’t it be better, then, to hide it from him?’

Aunt Mary shifted in her chair impatiently. ‘I have no interest in hypotheticals. It’s more than enough coping with what is in front of your face. Surely, Jeanie, you can find some real problems without fussing about the past? More tea?’

GLOSSARY OF SAMOAN WORDS AND PHRASES USED IN THE NOVEL

‘Ai muamua ona tautala ai lea | eat first, talk later
‘aiga | extended family
aualuma | the group of unmarried young women who attend the village taupou
auoi tafefe! | expression of surprise and dismay
afakasi | half caste
ali‘i | high chief
Inu au fualaau | Take your pills
O Ani o la‘u uo | well then Ani my friend
ue! | interjection (of surprise)
umu | traditional Samoan oven using hot stones; the food covered with wet banana leaves
fa‘afetai lava | thank you very much
fa‘asamoa | the traditional Samoan way
faipule | titled orator
fautasi | large canoe used for ceremonial occasions
fiafia | party
Fono | Parliament
fale | open-sided thatched house
falelaeti‘iti‘i | small hut on poles over the lagoon, used as a toilet
kilikiti | Samoan cricket, played with a three-sided bat and any number of players
lavalava | cloth tied around the waist, covering the legs – man or woman
lei | a garland of flowers, shells, seeds – or even sweets
loa | a tree whose seeds are used for dye
lo taua mea lilo | our secret place
masi | a food made from fermented green bananas
Masiofo | honorific given to a woman of highest rank
matai | titled leader
moso‘oia | type of tree
mumu | loose-fitting tent-dress for women
nu‘u | village
paopao | dug-out canoe with small outrigger
palagi | white person
palolo | the sexual part of a reef worm – a delicacy
palusami | delicacy made with young taro leaves and coconut cream
patele | priest
pisupo | tinned corned beef
pule | dignity, power (of a leader)
puletasi | tight-fitting two-piece dress for women
sa‘ofa‘i | ceremony of handing over title
sau!  | come!
soifua! | May you live!
sene  | cent
siva | a dance performed by women
Susuga | a polite way of addressing a titled person
taupou | village virgin: a ceremonial position
teine | girl
tala | dollar
talofa lava | hello
tama | man
Tama a ‘aiga | most high-born families in Samoa
tapalolo | fishing for palolo
taro | a large root vegetable, always served on special occasions

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First published 2010

© 2010 Jenny Pattrick

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ISBN 978 1 86979 307 4

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